Semana Santa

Semana Santa (or Holy Week as we like to say in English) is a very very big holiday in Spain. Sevilla in particular has the largest Semana Santa celebrations in Spain. Although I suppose 'celebrations' would really be the wrong word to use. Southern Spain is extremely Catholic, so in general Semana Santa focuses on the suffering of Christ and sadness of his crucifixion. In contrast I always felt that the emphasis was on the resurrection and the happiness of Easter Sunday in the US. 

For my Art and Fiesta class we went on a small field trip to several churches throughout Sevilla to see some of the pasos for Semana Santa. Within the Catholic church there are brotherhoods, which (I believe) each have a home base at a church in the city. Each brotherhood has a paso (pictured below) which features a saint or a depiction of a story from the bible. These are massive structures decorated in gold and silver and flowers and candles. Throughout the week, each paso is carried through the streets by the members of its respective brotherhood and paraded with a band and a crowd of followers in a procession. These processions last for hours and go throughout the entire historic area of the city, but they always start and end at their 'base' church and they all pass by the cathedral. 

In the weeks leading up to Semana Santa, the pasos are displayed in the churches for people to see while the caretakers put on the finishing touches. Many churches only have one, while some have two, three or even four pasos. 

The processions go throughout each day from Palm Sunday through Easter Sunday. I was traveling through mid-day Thursday, but we planned to be back in time for La Madrugada, or the processions in the middle of the night between Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. Some of the most famous pasos are carried through the city at this time. Although I'd missed several days of processions, I was excited to see this. Unfortunately, it had been raining for a few days so very few pasos had actually left their churches prior to our return. And the rain continued- La Madrugada was cancelled for the first time in over 60 years. I am a little sad that I didn't get to see it. 

All pasos were also cancelled on Friday and Saturday. Instead, we walked around to a few more churches to see more pasos. It amazes me that people actually carry there through the cobblestone streets in the heat of the day.

Luckily, the two processions on Easter Sunday were not cancelled due to good weather and I was able to see one of them in the street. In this parade was a band and the members of the brotherhood in their traditional robes (which look very similar to KKK robes- though I would assume that these traditional Catholic robes came first). 

After seeing the procession, we went to the church where La Macarena paso was located in the Sevilla neighborhood known as Macarena (which inspired the dance). There was actually a second paso there as well, but the star was La Virgen de la Macarena, with tears falling down her face. This paso should have been part of the Madrugada processions. 

I did find the coin machine outside of La Macarena comical, however. Have you ever seen one of those machines at zoos that imprint the face of an animal on a coin? This machine imprints the crying face of La Virgen de la Macarena on coins for people to purchase. 

Why waste an opportunity to make money?