Semana Santa

Our trip to Morocco with ISA was planned to take place during our spring break- Semana Santa. Here in Spain Easter isn't really a big deal, but Semana Santa (Holy Week) or the week leading up to Easter is a huge deal. During this week most businesses are closed, except for restaurants and souvenir shops, and many sections of the streets are blocked off as processions pass through them. All the churches in Spain have huge statues of the Virgin Mary and Christ, and during Semana Santa each church organizes a group of men to carry these statues through the streets, into the cathedral, and then back to the church where it came from. Sevilla, as it turns out, has the largest Semana Santa celebration in Spain! I was excited to come home from Morocco to experience the craziness.

The statues of the Virgin Mary and Christ are around 20 feet long by ten feet tall by ten feet across, so these are very large statues. They weigh as much as seven or eight tons and are carried on the shoulders of twenty to thirty men who walk together underneath the statues. The entire procession, from church to cathedral and back again, can take up to 12 hours. Usually they start mid-afternoon or evening and continue through the night and into the next morning. The statues are proceeded and followed by crowds of members of the church's congregation dressed in robes and tall pointed hats that remind Americans of the KKK. There is no correlation between the similarities of the two, however it must be recognized that the Semana Santa costumes came before those of the KKK. The statues are carried as a sign of recognizing the burden of the cross that Christ carried himself during Semana Santa, and is considered a great honor. It also takes a great amount of teamwork in order for all the men to walk together to carry the statue, and they practice for a month or more before Semana Santa. The costumes worn by the walkers in the processions are also a sign of penitence. They walk all through the night with the statues and cover themselves because the point is not to be recognized by the crowds for the pain and effort of walking all night, but rather that God knows who they are and what they are doing. 

Some people in Sevilla like the processions, some don't. Our host grandson who is three years old absolutely loves Semana Santa, but I've found that most native Sevillians find the processions inconvenient. Their usual routes to places that they frequently go in their city are blocked off and they're forced to take 15 to 20 minute detours. Also there is a lot of noise in the streets as bands often accompany the statues through their routes. The city is crowded with tourists, and people come from all over to see the grandeur in Sevilla. 

We are fortunate to live on a main street in our neighborhood of Triana, and Friday morning a procession passed right by our apartment building. Maria's brother and his wife live just three buildings down the street from us and have a balcony that overlooks the street. They invited us over to enjoy the procession without needing to be in the crowded street. We had a lovely morning with them, as Maria's sister-in-law plied us with shots of deliciously sweet whiskey (even though it was only 11 am, I've gotten the impression that nothing really matters during Semana Santa) and homemade sweets made from watermelon and anise (black licorice flavor). Maria's sister-in-law is a painter, and her beautiful apartment was filled with her works of art, many of which I recognized as being depictions of popular landmarks in Sevilla. Maria's brother, Jesus, is a poet, and he proudly showed us some of his leather-bound published books of poetry.

Saturday night Emily and I accompanied Maria to church. Her church doesn't have a service Easter morning, but instead the night before at 11 pm. The service itself lasted until 1:30 am, which I have to say is definitely too long for me to last in a church service, and we stayed in the church until nearly 3 am snacking on small pastries and drinking a warm chocolate drink. We talked with two of the alter servers which was a lot of fun, but Emily and I could not stop laughing and making jokes (I think we went a little crazy from sitting still for so long) and I think that we filled the stereotypes that many Spanish boys have of "crazy American girls."