'Emptied Spain' (España Vaciada) is a nickname for internal, rural regions of Spain that have seen large-scale migration over the past several decades to the country's big cities and coastal areas. My village of Tortuera, located in the historic region of Celtiberia, is itself part of 'Emptied Spain.' One result of this decline in population, together with an overall decline in church attendance, is that while nearly every village has a church as one of its main landmarks, not every village can be served by its own priest for regular Mass and the feast days. For example, on Good Friday (which commemorates Jesus' crucifixion), one priest in the wider region might go to one village to serve the local congregation for a Good Friday service at 4 p.m., then head off to another village to perform the same service at 5:30 p.m., and then a third village's church at 7 p.m. Although during this period of Holy Week, many people who have ties to these villages might come for a visit, attendance numbers within the villages' churches are generally low.
On Friday at noon, with the assistance of some Catholic youth who visited the village and help a number of churches in the region commemorate Holy Week, the church in my village performed the ritual of visiting the fourteen 'stations of the cross,' commemorating a particular event during the process of Jesus' death sentence, crucifixion and burial. Each station was then tied to the reality of 'Emptied Spain' today, with a prayer addressed to the Lord at each station regarding this reality. I thought it worth sharing some of these 'stations' to convey the nature of 'Emptied Spain' and the grievances therein.
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