I have been gone the past week on my spring break trip and just got back to Sevilla yesterday! Details about my trip to Italy and Greece coming soon, but I wanted to talk first about the celebration that has been going on in Sevilla and other parts of Spain this past week. Semana Santa (Holy Week) is the week leading up to Easter, and in Sevilla, they go all-out for it. It is a celebration that is only rivaled by Feria de Abril, the spring fair that will take place in two weeks (and for which we will get another week off of class!). The entire city transforms as it must work around las processiones, which are the identifying feature of Semana Santa. In Sevilla, there are around 60 brotherhoods that each identify with a specific church. During Semana Santa, the days consist of the different brotherhoods performing las processiones, or processions from the doors of their church to the cathedral and back. Each procession has an enormous wooden float (paso) depicting mary and jesus, and it is carried by costaleros, men from the brotherhood. The paso is preceded by lengthy lines of other men from the brotherhood, the nazarenos. Seeing the nazarenos takes some getting used to, because they wear capirotes, the same pointed cone-shaped hats that the KKK wear. During Semana Santa, the capirotes represent repentance and grief, so that men could traditionally hide their faces during penance. As an American, it requires a conscious effort to separate the religious significance from the hate that these costumes symbolize in the US. However, it is an incredible, reverent sight to see a procession. The processions can last up to 13 hours depending upon which brotherhood it is! The main streets of the city literally shut down as they are filled with these processions and all their spectators.
The biggest celebrations and processions happen on holy thursday and good friday, which I unfortunately was not here for. However, I arrived back in Sevilla yesterday (Saturday) afternoon, early enough that I could go watch the salida (the beginning of a procession, when the brotherhood exits their church) of a brotherhood that was happening right by my house. I have truly never seen anything like it. It took over an hour for the nazarenos to process out before the float - there easily were over 1000 of them. The float finally came out last, moving along at the pace of the costaleros' shuffling feet. It was covered in gold paint and had a huge image of mary at the top, adorned by lots of candles. When the float came out, the entire plaza fell silent. A woman came out onto a balcony of a building across from the church and began to sing, and the float shuffled along toward her, as it would do for the next six hours. I will post pictures of it soon; it was so cool.
Today is Easter Sunday, which isn't as big of a deal here as Good Friday, but it is still observed. I went to the Catedral for mass, and was delighted to discover organ music! It's my first mass I've been to here that has had music, and I have really missed it. City's pretty quiet otherwise; all the setup that began a good month before Semana Santa is being taken down, and it is a beautiful day. I took my time walking home and am going to go sit by the river soon and enjoy some sun!
My entry about Italy and Greece will probably be far longer than you will ever want to read, but even so - it's coming soon! Promise!
No comments:
Post a Comment