The Os Mortos Vivos (Living Dead) fiesta held in the village of Santa Marta de Ribarteme in Galicia (northwest Spain) will not be quite as peculiar this year.

That’s because the village’s new priest has decided to ban the day’s star tradition – the Procession of the Shrouds – which sees living people carried around in open coffins through the packed streets.

Usually those who ‘play dead’ in the caskets are locals who have escaped death in real life and it’s their relatives who carry the coffins on their shoulders.

But according to el cura (the priest), the custom has lost its religious significance and morphed into something more sinister.

Speaking to La Sexta TV channel, Father Francisco Javier explained he was against the tradition because, whilst it was popular, it generates “a lot of superstition, a lot of witchcraft, a lot of nonsense”.

The vast majority of Ribarteme’s villagers don’t want to lose this strange ritual which takes place every year on July 29th on the feast day of the local parish’s most important saint, Santa Marta.

One man described the decision as “horrible… because I’ve been coming here [for the event] since I was a boy”.

“It’s only the priest who wants to ban it, it’s a disgrace because it’s a tradition that’s always been like this,” another woman commented.

The Mayor of Santa Marta de Ribarteme, Xosé Manuel Rodríguez, recognised the event as being of cultural interest, and was more optimistic about recovering the spooky tradition.

“We are sure that if it will return,” Rodríguez told La Sexta. “We are going to recover a tradition that all of us would like to see continue”.

Unknown origins

The peculiar tradition of carrying living people around in open coffins has long taken place in the neighbouring Pontevedra villages of As Neves and Santa Marta de Ribarteme.

Some say it came about as a way for people to give thanks to Saint Martha for saving them or a loved one from death, an illness or an accident – or to implore her to do so in future. 

But no one is truly sure about the procession’s origins.

According to a book about the casket carrying published in As Neves, the tradition could date back to the Medieval Crusades. 

Nobles who left Galicia for the Middle East discovered in France the story of Saint Martha, whose brother Lazarus was raised from the dead when Jesus visited their home, according to the Bible’s account.

When they returned, they thanked the saint for having spared them from death by occupying their own coffins, according to this book.  

Another explanation is offered by Carlos Hernández, a sociologist who wrote a thesis about the procession.

In the past, people would buy their own coffin while they were still alive when they had the means or when a family member was ill, he said.   

If a seriously ill person survived, they would donate their coffin to the local parish for those who could not afford one.

The procession is similar to other rituals in Spain that depict the fight being good and evil, life and death, according to Hernández.

“Its about daring to stare death in the face, looking at Evil, so that life wins,” he argued.

Another village in Galicia also stages a procession with coffins, but in this case they are empty.