Palm Sunday

Palm Sunday is the liturgical occasion on which Rafael goes to meet Amparo Priego Martínez in Madrid on 30 March 1947, a reunion made consequential by her knowledge of his true identity and their long, shared history. The day’s public rituals and traditional palm decorations surround a meeting that remains intensely private: Rafael recognizes Amparo in the procession, but cannot bring himself to look at the boy walking beside her.

The Day’s Custom and Hardship

Rafael’s account begins with a local Palm Sunday saying: “Domingo de Ramos, al que no estrena se le caen las manos.” The custom of wearing or carrying something new becomes a small measure of deprivation. The building’s porter, Benigna, asks what Rafael has bought for the occasion; when he says that times are too hard for new clothes, she gives him a tiny palm ornament woven from strips of palm leaf. She jokes that at least this way his hands will not fall off, turning the saying into a modest act of care.

The morning makes that gesture more poignant. After two years without rain, the clear blue sky offers little comfort: it is cold. Children dressed for spring or summer shiver in light socks, skirts, and short trousers while the adults around them wear winter coats, hats, and gloves. Some carry decorated palms, their flowers, ribbons, and ornaments displaying the festive tradition; children with nothing new to wear watch them enviously. The ritual is thus visible in the streets, but participation in its outward signs also marks who can afford to celebrate.

Procession at Santa Bárbara

On reaching the Plaza de las Salesas, Rafael enters a nearly empty bar between Masses and orders coffee. He sits with his back to the barman so that he can watch the entrance to the Church of Santa Bárbara through a window painted with white lettering. The view divides the church doorway in two with an advertisement for Madrid’s best calamari sandwiches, setting the commercial street and the religious ceremony within the same frame.

Rafael sees the procession’s leaders emerge: altar boys carrying large gilded palms or small metal censers, followed by priests in embroidered vestments whose colors indicate a hierarchy he cannot interpret. As they begin their slow descent down the steps, with the congregation massed behind them, he pays for his coffee and crosses the plaza. He takes his place beside the railings before the Blessed Sacrament has reached street level. The account’s careful attention to where he sits, what he can see, and when he moves makes the procession both a public spectacle and the cover under which he waits for one particular person.

Recognizing Amparo

The crowd of worshippers, palm fronds, coats, hats, and women with covered heads makes Rafael fear that he may not be able to pick Amparo out. He recognizes her as she approaches: her hair is blond again, as it had not been since she was twelve, recalling the chamomile scent that first impressed him. He observes that she has changed little, and describes her beauty as more striking from a distance than close up. Her tightly fitted suit and the old black lace edging her veil set her apart from the modest dress expected of women under the victorious regime; her dark eyebrows sharply contrast with her dyed yellow-blond hair.

Rafael identifies her as Amparo Priego Martínez and reads her audacity in her appearance as part of what moves him. The emotional force of the meeting surprises him: they have shared too much, for too long, for him to emerge from seeing her unscathed. Palm Sunday’s public procession has brought them into the same place, but the encounter’s meaning lies in what they already know about one another, not in the ceremony surrounding them.

The Child and the Unspoken Stakes

Amparo is unaccompanied by a man, yet a boy walks beside her, holding her hand. Rafael deliberately does not look at the child. The account ends at this withheld glance, making the boy’s presence a boundary in the reunion rather than a fact Rafael is ready to confront. The contrast between the bright palms and the concealed personal stakes leaves the scene suspended: amid a ritual of public display and renewal, recognition carries the weight of a past that cannot be openly explained.