The Third Fall brings together Jesus’s exhaustion and the spiritual meaning of his relationship with the cross. It is one of the scenes preparing the Verges Procession’s conclusion. Its history also survives in actors’ and spectators’ memories of performances in different places.
Embracing the cross in the 2011 script
The text published on pp. 129–131 shows Jesus on the ground, surrounded by tormentors. Some raise the cross before him and he clings to it, speaking in a voice intended to convey exhaustion. His first speech addresses the Eternal Father and develops the meaning of sacrifice for redemption.
After a pause, Jesus embraces the cross higher up and returns to the image of the “sweet and beloved spouse”. The cross becomes a key, a treasure and a sign of victory. The speech belongs to the Christian reading of sacrifice and redemption.
The passage develops an image that also appears at the end of Pilate’s Sentence. Here, it forms part of a longer prayer. The tormentors speak again and the journey resumes; the entire scene is not performed in uninterrupted silence.
The memory of Can Trombis
Josep Maria Llach i Grande recalls a Third Fall that he places at Can Trombis, in the plaça Major. He describes it as spectacular and remembers a woman shouting at the participants while holding an umbrella. We do not know whether she was a neighbour or visitor, or the exact year of this episode.
The account reveals the intensity a performance could provoke. Josep Maria explains that the participants’ realism and involvement partly compensated for a lack of formal acting technique. This is his interpretation of that experience, not a definition of every actor in Verges.
Another scene remembered by Pere Fuster
Pere Fuster recalls a Third Fall on a small slope, with stones and a street that had not yet been paved. He remembers crowds gathering because they knew the fall would happen there. The place has not been confidently identified; we do not equate it with Can Trombis or a location on the current route.
Pere also remembers Josep Soler reciting verses in the streets. His account reveals a performing practice, but does not prove that Soler wrote those verses or that they all belonged to this scene.
From memory to the conclusion
Settings and staging have changed. The 2011 script helps explain the speeches; interviews reveal the participants’ experience and its possible effect on the audience. The journey’s end is developed in the Crucifixion and the Pietà.
Sources
La Processó de Verges (2011), pp. 129–131. Interviews with Josep Maria Llach i Grande and Pere Fuster in the Memòria Viva La Processó project, analysed as part of this research.
