Leonese Erotic

The Leonese are the people of León, the historic region of northwestern Spain that takes in the provinces of León, Zamora and Salamanca. They are set apart less by separate ancestry than by a stubborn memory. León was a kingdom in its own right from the early tenth century, and plenty of Leonese still object to being folded into the autonomous community of Castile and León in 1983. That feeling is called Leonesism. It shows up in council motions calling for a Leonese autonomous community of its own, in the lion emblem of the old kingdom and in a flat insistence that León is not a corner of Castile.

That pride has some grounding. In 1188 Alfonso IX called nobles, clergy and representatives of the towns to an assembly in León. UNESCO recognizes the decrees from that assembly as the oldest written record of the European parliamentary system. In 1230 the two crowns were joined for good under Castile's Ferdinand III. The language has had a harder road. Leonese belongs to the Astur-Leonese branch of Romance, so it's a close relative of Asturian, spoken on the far side of the mountains, and of Mirandese, which Portugal officially recognizes around Miranda do Douro. Nearly everyone speaks Spanish now. Leonese hangs on in upland valleys such as Laciana and La Cabrera and in parts of Zamora, though it's endangered, and the regional statute promises to protect it. Galician is spoken along the western edge of El Bierzo.

Catholicism here is public and communal. Lay brotherhoods run Holy Week in León and Zamora, and in León their hooded members are called papones. Each spring León's city council and the canons of San Isidoro stage Las Cabezadas, a centuries-old ritual argument. The question is whether the city's offering to the saint is a gift or an obligation. Each side restates its case, and neither gives in. Villages parade pendones, towering cloth banners carried upright on a single pole.

Rural life shaped the rest. Winter nights once meant the filandón, a gathering where neighbors spun, mended tools and told stories until late. Village fiestas still stage lucha leonesa, a wrestling style in which opponents grip each other's belts and try to throw one another. The Maragatos around Astorga were once muleteers hauling goods across Spain, and they eat their cocido backward, meat first and soup last. In rural Salamanca, the Charros bring out velvet and filigree jewelry on feast days. Decades of emigration have emptied many villages, but the customs have been harder to give up than the houses.