Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer is a pilgrimage destination in the Camargue, between the two principal branches of the Rhône delta. In the novel, it links an oral family legend about El Planeta’s nineteenth-century journey with Ana and José’s later pilgrimage and flamenco performance, bringing remembered tradition into the characters’ present lives.

Setting and Pilgrimage

In the legend José recounts, El Planeta sets out from Cádiz in the spring of 1842 for the sanctuary at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. The destination lies in the Camargue, between the Rhône’s two main branches. The account places the sanctuary within a route that carries El Planeta from Andalusia toward France, before the story moves on to his arrival in Marseille.

The place also figures in Ana and José’s own travels. They tell Frank’s family that they once made a pilgrimage there, joining a large gathering of Roma from across Europe. Ana danced flamenco at the gathering, making the journey both a religious pilgrimage and a performance before a transnational community.

El Planeta’s Legend

José presents El Planeta’s journey as the beginning of an old story, but qualifies its authority: he regards it as possibly a fabrication and stresses that it belongs to oral tradition. The story has circulated for generations and has numerous variants within the Maya family. José says he has found no written record of the Andalusian tradition, even from more recent times; he also mentions a supposedly equally ancient Swiss tradition that developed independently.

In the version José chooses to tell, El Planeta reaches Marseille on 26 May 1842 and works for a time as a dockworker to earn money for the return journey. The events said to have happened there a few weeks later form the next part of the family’s inherited account. Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer is thus not merely a named stop: it marks the starting point of a story whose details survive through retelling rather than documentation.

Flamenco, Names, and Shared Memory

During a later family outing in Seville, José and Ana recall their pilgrimage while the group visits the Mexican pavilion in María Luisa Park. Frank remarks on the word “maya,” noting its appearance both among Indigenous Americans and in Hindu usage without suggesting a linguistic relationship. José counters with “flamenco,” which names both a bird and an art form without an etymological connection. The exchange turns a casual observation into a reflection on how the same word can gather different associations without proving common origin.

Their memory of the pilgrimage supplies a concrete counterpart to the wordplay: at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, Ana danced flamenco before Roma gathered from across Europe, and the couple also saw the flamingos of the Rhône delta in the Camargue. The place brings together the dance and the bird that José’s comparison separates linguistically, while the shared recollection becomes part of the family’s present conversation. Through both the legend of El Planeta and Ana and José’s own journey, Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer serves as a meeting point of pilgrimage, oral inheritance, and remembered experience.