“Buenos días”, I respond.
“Hmmm, it’s already time for Operación Bikini? Has a year gone by that fast?” I think to myself as I remove my wool coat and hang it in the closet.
Next week, Spain celebrates the Semana Santa, Easter holiday, where all of the Catholics and non-practicing Catholics celebrate their Catholicism and sins with beautiful tronos for everybody to enjoy. The tronos, or Saints, that are on floats, are carried by the members of a church, los costaleros throughout the cities that have processions. There are only a few tronos in Madrid.
Los costaleros carry big floats with statues of Christ or the Virgin Mary, covered with candles and flowers. These floats can weigh up to 3 or 4 tons and are paraded throughout the streets by the members of the particular church. One of the best processions I have ever seen was with my mom back in 1997 when I lived in Málaga. I was showing her the city and we just happened to go into the church there when suddenly it got really quite and then we heard, “thump, thump, thump, thump” and in came the procession. It was breathtaking.
Around the tronos carried by the costaleros, are other members of the cofradia, dressed in outfits that consist of a robe with a cone hat. Some say that the Klu Klux clan stole the idea of their outfits from the Spanish processions. There are also drummers and as they beat the drum, the cofrades take their pasos. It is all quite intense and worth a visit to Spain to see.
Along with the processions during Easter week, comes a few days off from work which usually means, too much eating, relaxing and drinking. It is right after the Easter holidays due to the extra pounds put on during the holiday, that leads up to the when the Spaniards and all of the news feeds start spreading the word about Operación Bikini.
I typed Operación Bikini into www.google.es and thousands of articles came up on how to lose the “Michelin”, Spanish for “the spare tire”, for bathing suit season. There is even one article that states that Operación Bikini will make it to the school cafeterias with healthier foods to help control obesity in children. The articles I found write about what to eat, how often to eat, how to prepare your skin for the sun, what exercises are best and all say to drink lots of water. It all seems like basic health stuff to me. The Spaniards actually become quite obsessed with this "operacion bikini" concept. These are the times when I walk in to office kitchen during an on-going session of Camera Café and opt to eat something when a co-worker snickers that it is going to ruin the operación bikini and they like to know how often one goes to the gym. I have even caught them comparing their cholesterol.
I am an avid gym freak even though I have had to tone it down a notch; I go every other day for about a half hour to an hour and a half, but this is the season when I actually don’t like going to the gym because it fills up with all of the “get-ready-for-bathing suit-season” temporary members.
It may seem odd that I have chosen to write about two subjects that really do not go hand-in-hand. Well, they don’t at all. Nobody is going to go to an Easter procession in a bikini or swim trunks but perhaps due to lent and giving up the foods one loves or due to the fact that there are so many holidays in Spain that this is the prime moment when the media goes on a frenzy about diets and skin scare. Holidays in Spain could be defined as a time to eat too much, a time to take a really long siesta after eating and drinking too much, a time to do absolutely nothing, the list could go on. But my theory is, is that if you can’t pinch an inch after a holiday, then perhaps you didn’t enjoy it.
For the body conscious and body obsessed, now is their time to shine, after the Semana Santa that is, and for those of us who don’t really care or who maintain a healthy well-balanced lifestyle all year round, we feel stuffed at the gym by all of the extras. Needless to say, I don’t think that people should really need the “operación bikini” as an excuse to take better care of themselves but if it is an initiative, I say go for it – just don’t hog the treadmill.
*Note: The photo of the woman in the reindeer antlers is courtesy of Juan Ignacio Garcia who took the photo while on holiday in the Canary Islands.
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