Happy (late) Easter to everyone. This year for Easter we didn’t get to have any chocolate eggs or bunnies, since they’re pretty scarce in Spain, but we did get to enjoy the celebrations Spanish style which is to watch the processions.
The processions start a week before Easter Sunday and take place every evening/night right up to Easter Sunday.
The processions are basically parades of people dressed up who carry holy images through the city. Marchers carry candles, rosaries, crosses, ancient bibles, silver and golden staffs as well as the huge floats of holy images. Mournful marching music and the smells of incense fill the air.
The churches in the city organise a procession from their church to the cathedral where the members will dress up in various ways depending on their role in the procession. The most striking outfit is the one worn by the brotherhoods of the churches, which to non-Spanish people look a bit like Ku Klux Klan outfits. Though I’m pretty sure the Spanish were dressing this way first.
The guys in the brotherhoods dress this way because they are seeking penance for sins previously committed and want to hide their identity. Because of this they are also called ‘penitents’. Some of the penitents will even march barefoot through the streets.
Women in the processions dress in black with a long black veil. They also carry a rosary and a small card with an image of Jesus or Mary as well as a large candle.
The big highlight of the processions are the pasos, which are huge richly decorated floats that carry sculptures of Jesus or Mary.
These painted wooden sculptures were made by master artists and can be hundreds of years old. The bases of the pasos are made of solid carved wood, or silver or even gold. These can get very heavy and weigh up to 2000kg. And they aren’t mounted on wheels either, they’re carried on the shoulders of about 40 big burly blokes. If you do the maths that works out to 50kg each! And some of the processions can take 10 hours from leaving the church to returning.
They carry the paso a few hundred metres before they put it down for a rest. Every so often they will even change crews of carriers so the others can have a rest. When the paso is lifted off the ground again everyone in the crowd claps. It’s considered a great honour to be one of the carriers. Each paso is followed by a marching band which keep the paso carriers in step.
As the pasos passed people would reach out to touch them and make the sign of the cross. I knew religion was important to the Spanish but it was different to see the devotion first hand.
Another interesting thing we saw during the processions were the kids in the crowd making balls of wax from the drips of the candles from the marchers. Because the pasos had to stop regularly there was a lot of time where the marchers weren’t moving and this is when the kids would run up and ask for some wax.
Not everyone would let them have wax, and there were some brotherhoods where the senior penitents would shoo the kids away so it wasn’t a an officially sanctioned activity. We think that it may have been something parents came up with to try and keep the kids from getting bored during the regular stops.
After a week’s worth of processions everyone is woken up on Easter Sunday by the church bells ringing as well as all the kids in town running around ringing small bells to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. It was a very interesting and different way to celebrate Easter compared to back home and we’re happy we got to see it.
Leave a Reply