Living in an all girls Colegio Mayor (College)

Those of you who imagine 18yr old me living in a dorm or mixed college type of accommodation would be wrong. In fact I think few people would guess the type of medieval-like institution I lived in. Medieval in that the structure of a Colegio Mayor in Spain dates back to the late Middle Ages when the first universities were established and is similar to the early Oxford and Cambridge colleges. In Spain they still retain some of their medieval character usually housing university students of the same sex and sometimes hosting lectures as well as cultural activities. In Pamplona they had been founded to imitate as close as possible their medieval predecessors with each colegio having their own chapel, choir, and all the resident students taking their meals together. In Oxford the colleges had historically had curfew but that hadn't existed for a while, in Pamplona they were alive and well. To me it felt like what I imagined an all girls boarding school must feel like.

My Colegio, St Clara, was run by one of those many branches of the Franciscan order, well they also had some relationship with the Poor Clares. It is clear to this day I never quite understood their filiation. There were 130 of us girls and 13 sisters. In spite of the number of students it really felt quite communal, breaking curfew being one of those unifying activities that year after year had entertained a resident of St Clara. What made it more of a challenge was the rotation of sisters that would spend the night on our side of the building for the sole purpose of maintaining curfew and lights out after 11pm. My room was up next to the library, which meant I only had a neighbour on one side. The cloistered silence I enjoyed was meant to foster study, in reality panic at the ever looming examinations was more effective. The position of my room made it especially good for nighttime rendezvous with friends. Throughout the building groups of us would risk staying up past curfew, sometimes by candlelight to avoid detection. On one particular night we almost got caught, some girls hid in my shower, another one in my closet, still another under the bed. The sister came in and I pretended to be in a late night study session. Why else would I have my light on? Once the sister left people starting coming out of hiding, barely contained laughter which burst out once the tall, lanky girl that had hid in my closet emerged wearing my ball gown. How had she managed to change in that tiny space without making noise? 

Another medieval remnant at my university was La Tuna. An all male medieval minstrel group that pranced about in puffy trousers and capes. They would regularly go around well past midnight and many bottles of wine serenading under our windows. Getting to St Clara was especially interesting to them because of our location. Unlike all the other colegio's that were on campus or in the town we were out past city lines in the middle of cornfields. For protection, behind our garden walls, the sisters kept two Rottweilers. They would somehow managed to climb over the walls and past the Rottweilers, which they must have bribed with meat or something, and sing at our windows. Given the freezing and often snowy evenings Pamplona regularly has in the winter months they must have consumed quite a bit of wine to keep warm. We would rush to the windows that faced the part of the garden where they would stand to hear them. There was something quite thrilling about these nighttime serenades that seems quite funny now, maybe it was a bit funny then as well, all part of the experience though, the forbidden can always be attractive.