Mi Vida en España: Glimpses of my life in Spain: Semana Santa (Holy Week)

I was on my London/Slovakia trip for the first part of Holy Week (see the former blog post), but returned Wednesday night to Sevilla. That night Rosario, Grace (my roommate), and I went to see one of the processions that was going to be in our neighborhood. Rosario goes and sees this procession every year because it is from the church that we go to. To explain briefly I’m going to copy and paste a great summary from the internet about Holy Week in Sevilla and add in my own comments.

Holy Week in Seville (Semana Santa de Sevilla) is one of the most important traditional events of the city. It is celebrated in the week leading up to Easter (Holy Week among Christians), and is one of the better known religious events within Spain. This week features the procession of pasos, floats of lifelike wooden sculptures of individual scenes of the events of the Passion, or images of the Virgin Mary showing restrained grief for the torture and killing of her Son. Some of the sculptures are of great antiquity and are considered artistic masterpieces, as well as being culturally and spiritually important to the local Catholic population. There are processions everyday (around 6-8)

During Holy Week, the city is crowded with residents and visitors, drawn by the spectacle and atmosphere. The impact is particularly strong for the Catholic community.

The processions are organized by hermandades and cofradías, religious brotherhoods. During the processions, members precede the pasos (of which there are up to three in each procession) dressed in penitential robes, and, with few exceptions, hoods. (in the pictures you’ll see that the robes may remind you of the KKK – it is important to remember that they have NOTHING to do with that and the KKK copied this clothing style) They may also be accompanied by brass bands. The pasos are carried by men that are underneath and supporting the weight on the back of their neck. The men cannot see anything and are directed by a person’s voice in front of them – it is quite amazing. You can only see their feet as the paso goes by.

The processions work along a designated route from their home churches and chapels to the Cathedral, usually via a central viewing area and back. The processions from the suburbanbarrios may take 14 hours to return to their home churches.

As of 2009, a total of 60 processions are scheduled for the week, from Palm Sunday through to Easter Sunday morning. The climax of the week is the night of Holy Thursday, when the most popular processions set out to arrive at the Cathedral on the dawn of Good Friday, known as the madrugá. (Wikipedia) The idea of the procession is that they are going to the Cathedral to ask for penance.

Back to the procession that we saw Wednesday – I was a little surprised by it. I guess I had imagined something more formal and serious in how it was done, but there were people walking through the processions and the people of the procession would stop and talk or lean on their candles. I’m not sure if it’s because the processions are so long and they had been walking for a while so they were less formal. Also we weren’t in the center of the city so I don’t know if they are more formal there – but it still thought it was interesting. Though when the paso of Christ or the Virgin Mary came – people seemed to pay attention more. The pasos are quite beautiful and amazing to see especially as they go by.

Even though I was really tired Wednesday night I am very glad I went to see that procession (we left at about 11:30pm to see it and didn’t get home until after 12:30am) because the rest of the week it was raining! We had some very bad luck this Holy Week because if it rains, the processions do not happen because the pasos are very old and valuable (some are made with gold) and cannot get wet. Therefore no processions occurred the rest of the week except for one on Saturday and the Resurrection one on Sunday. VERY SAD!!! It wasn’t a light rain either – a down pour! So, we had to spend most of our vacation in our room…quite sad. It is sadder for all the people of the processions though because they prepare all year for this and then they didn’t even get to do their processions. I guess many people were crying about this because it’s such a strong tradition here.

Friday night I went to worship with Rosario and Grace. It was a longer worship service (about 2 hours) where there were longer readings and longer prayers. Also there was a part of the service where a man walked up the center of the church holding up the cross with two people on either side of him with large candles. They all stood at the front of the church and then everyone came up to the cross, bowed and kissed it. I sadly missed what the priest said before this happened, so I don’t know the full meaning behind it besides what I can think of on my own.

Saturday we did see the one procession that happened – it was a small one, but still nice to see. It began to rain while they were going by which meant they started to move VERY quickly! It was almost comical how quickly the Virgin Mary booked it past us! Sunday morning some of us went to Easter mass in the Cathedral. We got there early because we wanted to make sure we would have seats – little did we know that it we didn’t have to be there that early. We found out that Easter is not as big of a deal here. There is a stronger concentration on the Passion of Christ than the Resurrection for the people. The mass seemed like any other mass except that there were many flowers and of course the readings and message were the Easter message. Many of my friends and I talked about how it really didn’t feel like Easter – we had to keep reminding ourselves. I have to say I missed the traditions and celebrations of home for Holy Week, but I also think it didn’t help that many of the traditions here did not happen because of the weather.

Well, now I’m back in classes. There are only three weeks left of classes counting this week and then we have finals week. Though next week we only have two days of classes (Tuesday and Wednesday) because Monday is a holiday and the whole week is a festival here called Feria (I’ll explain more in the blog for that week). Most schools in Spain do not have school all week, but we have it for two days. I can’t believe the semester is almost over!

Here are a few pictures from this week!