Bunuel_Luis_My_Last_Breath

The Drums ofCalandaTHEREis a custom, practiced perhaps only in certain Aragonianvillages, called the Drums of Good Friday. On thatday, drums are beaten from Alcafiiz to Hijar; but nowhere arethey beaten with such mysterious power as in Calanda. The ritualdates from the end of the eighteenth century and had alreadydied out by 1900, but one of Calanda's priests, Mosen VicenteAllanegui, brought it back to life.The drums of Calanda beat almost without pause from noon onGood Friday until noon on Saturday, in recognition of the shadowsthat covered the earth at the moment Christ died, as well as theearthquakes, the falling rocks, and the rending of the temple veil.It's a powerful and strangely moving communal ceremony which Iheard for the first time in my cradle. Up until recently, I often beatthe drums myself; in fact, I've introduced these famous drums tomany friends, who were all as strongly affected as I was. I remembera reunion in 1980 with a few friends in a medieval castle not far fromMadrid where we surprised everyone with a drum serenade imported