Semana Santa - Holy Week - is a big deal here. After last Monday's flight cancellation that affected our bus and hostel bookings, Katie (one of my college roommates who now lives in Madrid) and I amended our travel plans and found ourselves in Córdoba on Wednesday night.
After lunch we found the entire city lining the streets and stood behind a row of wheelchairs to see what the commotion was. We saw our first Holy Week procession!
This tradition is unique to Spain. Members of the religious brotherhoods wear penitential robes and hoods while processing from their church, to the city's main cathedral, and back to their church. Depending on the distance, this march can take up to fourteen hours. A friend we made, Joséan, explained that the robes and hoods mark the person as a sinner. A few hundred to a few thousand of these march in pairs down narrow streets. Each brotherhood wears a different color combination.
The highlight of these processions are the pasos, a float built of wood that weighs at least a ton. Each procession has up to three floats depicting a scene from the passion, an image of Christ, and an image of the Virgin Mary (always under a canopy).
These floats are so heavy that anywhere from 24 to 54 men are needed to carry the paso. The men are hidden underneath by a drape, making it feel like the pasos move down the street by themselves. I took a photo of the men's feet:
Sometimes a band (a wind quartet or brass and percussion) is thrown into the mix:
And sometimes women in La Mantilla, a mourning outfit, follow the paseos:
One of my favorites was the El Silencio (Silence) brotherhood in Sevilla. Founded in the 1300s, they are the oldest procession in the world:
Katie and I spent hours watching these. There are upwards of sixty processions in a city spread over a week. While we grew tired of watching the same ol' thing parading through the streets, the locals ate it up. The sights, smells, and sounds of Semana Santa gave me a new dimension of festivities to Easter Week.
After lunch we found the entire city lining the streets and stood behind a row of wheelchairs to see what the commotion was. We saw our first Holy Week procession!
Katie and I spent hours watching these. There are upwards of sixty processions in a city spread over a week. While we grew tired of watching the same ol' thing parading through the streets, the locals ate it up. The sights, smells, and sounds of Semana Santa gave me a new dimension of festivities to Easter Week.
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