PhD Program in Historical studies
The Rocas
The Rocas are 11 wooden processional wagons, which are boat-shaped, on which many groups of statues are installed with the effigies of saints or depictions of biblical events. It is an extraordinary apparatus (elsewhere called castillos), transported by shoulder with litters or dragged with the aid of horses. This event originated in the early modern period, although the custom to prepare triumphal wagons is older. Similar pageants, in fact, were used during the triumphal entry into the city by medieval kings. While in the past such representations also included the participation of living people, after the Counter-Reformation they have given way to more composed ceremonies with statues and statuary groups. A similar tradition is present in Seville.
The Rocas which parade (some carried on shoulders, others horse-drawn) before the Blessed Sacrament have been built in different historical periods. Some of them, the oldest, evoke particular moments in Spanish history: the Rocas built in the sixteenth century, in fact, with the exception of the Purísima, which celebrates the Immaculate Conception, refer to the time of Muslim rule and the Reconquista (Roca San Miguel, Roca Diable and Roca de la Fe). The Rocas named after Saint Vicente Ferrer and the Santísima Trinidad date back to the seventeenth century, however. The nineteenth-century pageants are dedicated to the city of Valencia and a symbolic portrait of Fame, while those made in the twentieth century depict a prominent citizen of Valencia (San Juan de Ribera) and the patron saint of the city: the Mare de Deu dels Desamparats (whose roca was built in 1995 in Baroque style). In the second millennium, most recently, upon the initiative of the friends of Corpus of the city of Valencia, the Roca del Santo Cáliz (on whose wagon some biblical characters are drawn) has been introduced in the parade.