Jan 12 2009
Easter in Spain
Easter is coming up, and in Spain you need to be here to experience the best of Semana Santa Spanish style. The holy week in 2009 starts 5th April, and finishes a week later on the 12th, and if you know you’re going to be here, make sure you also book a hotel room soon.
Spaniards love Easter, it’s a time for big displays and parades, and families always get together for big meals.
Semana Santa is a national event, but the biggest and most impressive weeks are in Andalucia, particularly Sevilla and Malaga.
The processions always start from the church where the paso (large wooden Easter scenes) is normally kept, then wind their way through the streets for the public to see, before finally entering the church again.
The participants all have to wear robes often with a pointed hoods that makes them look very sinister but the outfits have been worn since medieval times as a mark of respect and to disguise the penitents so that they may commune with God alone, even whilst being part of a lare procession.
Every village or town has it’s own processions, some of the smaller villages have pasos that are carried by the local children, whereas the towns and cities tend to have much larger pasos requiring a lot of manpower to carry.
Seville and Malaga in Andalusia are the most popular for tourists with processions every day of Holy Week. Some of the larger processions involve upto 15,000 penitents marching for hours in time to mournful music.
