Romería del Rocío

El Rocío is a village of sand streets and hitching rails in the Doñana marshes that is empty most of the year. At Pentecost around a million people arrive. More than a hundred brotherhoods cross the marshes on foot, on horseback and in ox-drawn carretas, some walking for three days to get there.

Friday and Saturday are arrivals and formal presentations at the sanctuary gates, in order of seniority. Sunday is the mass and the night rosary. The moment everything is for comes in the small hours of Pentecost Monday: the salto de la reja, when the young men of Almonte vault the railing, take the Virgin out on silver andas and carry her through the crowd for twelve hours or more.

This is a pilgrimage, not a show, and it is physically hard — heat, dust, no infrastructure. The village has almost no beds; stay in Almonte, Matalascañas or Huelva, and book nine to twelve months out.

See the Huelva province guide.