Seville in Holy Week 2000 is an amazing experience.The reason is that all
during holy week, each Church, and there are a lot in
Seville has its own statue that it carries in procession from the church to
the Cathedral and back again.
The processional route is a circular one so they have a different route to and from the cathedral.
Imagine if in London during Holy Week, every single Catholic church in the diocese had a procession from their church to Westminster Cathedral and back again following a circular route, and that all the roads were closed to traffic for all or most of the day. When we arrived in Seville in a taxi from the airport on Holy Tuesday about 10 pm we had to get out and walk with our suitcases about 50 yards to the hotel as the road was closed and the same thing happened on Easter Sunday evening when we arrived in Granada and the road running infront of the hotel was blocked by an Easter procession.
The processions are AMAZING huge Ornate floats called pasos are carried
with a statue, twice life size,usually either a Virgin Mary or a sceme fromthe Passion with
Jesus +Roman soldiers or the two thieves or other characters, made of wood
but painted realistically so it looks
like a waxwork,placed on a wooden platform maybe about 10 yards long and 6 yards
wide, just guessing, and then with flowers in abundance in front of it
and dozens of huge candles, maybe 3 meters tall.
The Virgins tend to be dressed in magnificent robes of real cloth, heavily embroidered in beautiful detail and colours
Over the platform is a canopyand underneath between 30 and 50 men are carrying it on their shoulders but they are covered by a curtain on all sides like the valance on a bed but reaching from the bottom of the platform to ground level.It is very heavy so the men walk quite slowly and stop every 30 yards or so. Sometimes the temperature can be well into the 70’s and I saw people with plastic bottles of water from which they handed out drinks in tin cups
They are accompanied by a bugle or tuba band playing slow lugubrious but rhythmical music
and up to 1000 "Nazarenes" dressed in penitent
costume with a robe like a cassock and and a high pointed hood
with eye holes,
the robes and hoods varied
from all black, to black and white
to purple or turquoise.Each one represents a diffferent brotherhood. They carry huge
candles, staff and other items. Sometimes there were small boys in the
procession as young as seven
to pu and they were handed sweets at regular
intervals and had to raise their hoods to eat them.
The processions reach their climax on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, continuing all through the night. For this occasion many of the ladies dress traditionally in black dresses with high combs in their hair carrying the black lace mantilla or veil.The men wear dark suits and the children were beautifully turned out the boys in grey flannel suits with short trousers and the girls with smocked dresses and matching bows in their hair. I haven’t seen children that well dressed since about 1962!
On Good Friday
We saw two spectacular processions, both statues of Mary, wearing real cloth
robes and a real gold crown!
>At one of them , the procession of la Macarena, we were right near one of the major parish churches and as the procession came past a priest on a balcony sang a long paeon of praise. It was unaccompanied and rather like the sound of a Jewish cantor. La Macarena is Seville’s favourite statue
.>
She has glass tears in her eyes and always steals the show in the holy week parades. Like a pop star she makes her admirers gasp and swarm round her crying "o la hermosa, o la guapa- oh the beautiful or the handsome.
We also saw
processions on the Wednesday evening, on Maundy Thursday and on Easter day.
One of the Good Friday processions was accompanied by several men dressed as
Roman soldiers with ostrich plumes in their hats.
>
Easter Sunday we saw yet another procession and then we noticed people
going into a church where a mass was taking place. We stayed for part of the
service but had to stand as the seats were all full. Karen and Andrew sat on
the floor very bored, Gordon could recognise quite a lot of what was being
said as his Spanish is good,
I was able to make out the Lords Prayer. We
left before the handing out of bread and wine as we knew that as Protestants
we would not be welcome ,but we were glad to have taken part in an Easter Service and to have experienced the unique experience of La Semana Santa (Holy Week) in Seville
