Caravans of women: The ethnography of a type of romantic encounter

Abstract

This paper is based on anthropological research into the Spanish phenomenon of caravanas de mujeres (whereby groups of women travel to villages in search of a partner). In particular the research investigates rural depopulation, marriage strategies, life projects, bachelorhood and the “migration of female migration”, from a gender perspective that is essential if these are to be understood. This paper aims to shed some light on a very important element of these caravanas: that is, love and the leading role it plays these meetings between unacquainted men and women who are looking for a relationship contrived out of the mutually agreed fiction of a dance in which both sexes are subject to the same central gaze (of desire) and which has a habitual rituality is transformed by the accompanying circumstances.