The Wednesday before the start of Semana Santa I went on a tour/information session called, "Conocer la Semana Santa" with a small group of students from by program. This was more or less my crash course in all things Semana Santa. Here's what we learned:
Semana Santa in Sevilla is a really big deal. Not only is it a week of celebration but it is the largest system of processions in the world. Every day of the week there are numerous of processions that run more or less all hours of the day. A procession is more or less a parade. Churches from all over Sevilla create a "hermandad" or brotherhood.
The standard structure of a procession is:
La Cruz de Guía: the guiding cross, which leads the procession through La Carrera Oficial (Official path for each procession through La Campaña and Plaza de San Francisco, down Avenida de la Constitución into and through La Catedral out into Plaza del Triunfo and back to their church).
Nazarenos: although at first these guys can be a bit intimidating, since their outfits resemble those of the KKK, their actually really nice - some hand out caramels during the day and at night they will let the wax from their candles drip down to for a ball that other nazarenos add too so that kids literally have a ball of wax bigger than their heads before they move out of their parents' houses (which happens in their earlier 30's here in Spain.) The pointed hood is called a capirote. Each hood and cloak is a different color based on the hermandad and the nazarenos walk in sets of two, carrying candles that are a good 5 feet long. There are anywhere from hundreds to a few thousand nazarenos in each procession and are broken up into tramos - I'm not 100% sure of why but I do know that each tramo is marked by a flag and the fifth tramo is the last tramo and is marked by a flag that looks like a fish and is called, bacalao (That means cod and was my high school Spanish teacher Sr. Smalling's favorite word).
Then, between the last tramo there is usually a group of church clergy, altar boys, tons of incense, huge candelabras, all sorts of craziness leading the way for the...
PASO: floats made of wood, covered/plated in silver or gold, with a large sculpture of either Christ depicting the events proceeding His Death and Resurrection, or the Virgin Mary praying, crying, or simply looking extremely pained/depressed for the loss of her Son.
Underneath the Paso are the Costaleros. These guys are the ones that make everything happen - well sort of. They're the ones carrying the paso through the narrow streets of Sevilla. They're allowed to rest when they set the paso down and for the processions that take a really like time, costaleros will switch out with one another (there always seems to be a relief nearby in the crowd).
Penitentes: a group of more people from the hermandad that wear the same cloak as the nazarenos but without the hood and carry wooden crosses to mark their penance. Many of the penitentes walk barefoot (oh, a lot of nazarenos also walk barefoot).
Musica: after the penitentes or sometimes before the penitentes immediately after the Paso there will be a band or a choir as a part of the procession. I'm definitely thinking about downloading some Semana Santa music from iTunes - it's really makes the procession a rather moving experience.
Then, the structure repeats itself - each hermandad usually has 2 pasos - one of Christ and one of Mary. but the entire procession structure happens for each paso - so Christ has his own set of of nazarenos and penitentes and Mary has her own set of nazarenos and penitentes.
Other things we learned while on the tour:
- no two pasos are alike
- Mary's insides are hollow but her face, neck, arms and hands are real (well, in terms of a sculpture they're "real")
- Her cloak is made of velvet and stitched and embroidered with strands of gold and EXTREMELY heavy
- The canopy or palio that covers Mary is decorated differently for each paso and is always very very very elaborate - usually with more plated gold and silver, lots of mirrored surfaces, more embroidered heavy fabrics, and often times tassels that hang down.
- All of the flowers on the pasos are real - other cities in Spain with inferior Semana Santa festivities use silk flowers (hence their inferiority)
- The traditional Semana Santa snacks are pestiños (Sort of a pita like chip soaked in honey and then folded) and torrija (Think french toast, only not. It's a piece of bread soaked in honey/milk/sugar/wine/???).
- Processions last forever - at least 4 to 6 hours, some go on for more than 12. Very crazy.
- umm and lots of other random facts about Semana Santa that I sadly, cannot quite remember.
Finally Semana Santa began!
Domingo de Las Ramas (Palm Sunday)
Nikki and I dressed up a bit, went to mass at La Catedral and then sat in Puerta Jerez (right outside of La Catedral) for a good hour and a half and people-watched. There were a ton of cute little kids in wonderful frilly dresses, and little suits and ties, and sisters that were matching. There were cute old couples walking around holding hands. And, well, there were MORE than enough teenagers wearing dresses that reminded me more of compression shorts than anything else. After a quick lunch and a trip to the park to read some of my Bible (it was my goal to read through all of the Gospels during Semana Santa) we began the Paso watching.
We somehow managed to sneak through the crowds to the corner of Calle Placentines and Calle Aleman which is the corner next to where the pasos exited the Cathedral. It was a great way to start off the Semana Santa-ing experience. We had more or less front row (there was one group of people in front of us but we could still see just about everything) and we were RIGHT BY THE CATHEDRAL. We were able to see: La Paz, La Hiniesta, La Cena, and San Roque.
Getting away from our corner was a bit of a trial - but my Type-A personality came through and according to Nikki, I "controlled the heck out of that crowd." After we escaped the massive swarm of people and had a bit of room to stretch out we bought some Semana Santa snacks from a guy with a cart and headed in for the night.
Santo Lunes (Holy Monday)
Monday afternoon, after a lazy morning in the park, I seemed to just walk into one Paso after another. I think I ended up seeing ------ Everywhere I went there seemed to be a Paso.
That night Juanma joined me for the Paso-watching fun so that I could have a "true Semana Santa experience." Well... Sadly, Juanma is one of those Sevillianos that leave Sevilla for Semana Santa to avoid the crowds. After pouting about having to walk (rather than drive) into el centro, and walking in every direction imaginable to try to avoid La Avenida de La Constitucion since it's completely blocked off with pasos coming from every imaginable direction. I had faith that Juanma knew what he was doing... yeah right. At one point someone stopped us to ask for directions. He was no help- At all. At that point I knew it was going to be a long night. It didn't help that we couldn't seem to get very far without running into one of his friends, or a friend of his families.
One woman that he knew ended up rescuing me from whatever attempt Juanma was making to "show me Semana Santa" and took us through Plaza Nueva and down Calle Sierpes to catch a paso: Las Penas. While Juanma's friend and I (whose name I sadly cannot remember) were getting to know each other and excitedly talking about Semana Santa, Juanma decided it was appropriate to make an array of jokes and started whining about: how difficult it was to stay standing, how much he had to walk around - his solution was that I should be carrying him, or at the very least pushing him in a stroller. There was a pretty big crowd so all we could really see at first were the tips of the capirotes but once the paso got closer we could smell the incense and hear the drums. At this point Juanma compared the sound of the drums to the footsteps of the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park and I was slightly afraid that his friend was going to kick us butt, but like all things of God, the paso through just in time to distract her.
After the paso went through I decided Juanma have behaved well enough to finally receive his "Día del Padre" McFlurry. While eating our ice cream we had a lovely "father-daughter" chat about what sort of clothes are and are not appropriate to be worn out of the house. Don't worry - I have yet to fail the test. Instead we both sat there shaking our heads in disbelief: "How did their fathers let them out of the house!?!"
Santo Tuesday (Holy Tuesday)
On Tuesday morning Little Maria and I decided we were going to try to watch the salida (when a paso leaves their home church to begin the procession) of El Cerro in the morning. Well, turns out the church was a bit further away than we had anticipated. Instead we ended up catching in right in front of the business school where I take classes 4 days a week! It was really amusing to watch the groups of nazarenos and costaleros walk into my school's cafeteria for a quick cafe as the rest of their group stopped trying to deal with the lovely mess of construction just a couple blocks away from the school. This was probably one of the largest (in terms of numbers) processions I had seen. There were just SO many nazarenos. As we waited Maria and I taught each other the Lord's Prayer in Spanish and English respectively, and took some silly pictures.
After our adventure I met up with Nikki for our Semana Santa adventure with Javier care of, CIEE. Javier (for some odd reason... I'm guessing our program pays him) decided that he wanted to take a group of Americans around to watch pasos for the evening. So off we went. Running all around el centro. We started in Plaza Alfalfa by Jesus de Las Tres Caidas where we saw San Esteban. After that we went to a place in an area of Sevilla I had never been to before in a tiny little street where everyone was smashed together. We were entertained and slightly annoyed by two little boys that were getting frustrated by all of the people that were trying to cross the street, through the nazarenos, and get from one side to another. (This is one of those things that is much easier said than done.) Finally, Los Javieres (I'm assuming this is why Javier dragged us all the way through Sevilla to see it) brought their paso through. From there we headed back into the heart of the city, and saw Los Estudiantes. Los Estudiantes is a hermandad created from students from the Universidad de Sevilla. It is proud to have the largest number of penitentes in all of Semana Santa, and has representatives from every college/department in the university system. From there we all went our separate ways into the massive crowd and went home for dinner.
Nikki and I had plans to meet at midnight to watch her hermanita as a nazareno en La Candelaria. Well somewhere along the way I got confused at thought we were meeting at 11... so I sneaked into her homestay and we made fun of the Aladdin poster that is more or less her headboard and read a coffee-table book about Minnesota from one of their former study abroad students. Very entertaining. At midnight (our originally scheduled time) we headed back out onto the streets. As soon as we turned off of the street Nikki lives on we ran into her host family - turns out her hermanita was done for the day :( But we had plans to see the paso so we continued on. We were planning on watching the paso go through los Jardines de Murillo, but we could see a paso just about to turn around the corner so we ran ahead to see it - for once a procession was on time rather than a good half hour behind. We ended up catching up with la Virgen and got to stand right next to the paso and walk along side of it for quite a bit down the street. Then we realized that if we were standing next to Mary, Jesus had already been through so off we went running after Jesus. Our first goal was to cross to the other side of the procession so that we could run through the park rather than get pushed up against the walls of the streets. The nazarenos were standing still so we thought it would be a good time to sneak through. Well, the moment we had both stepped into the middle of the lines of nazarenos, they lifted their candles and began to walk so we ran for a few yards in the middle of the nazarenos under the archway of the huge candles until we were finally able to dip out between two nazarenos that were spaced apart a good distance and got into the park. From there it was madness. It was pretty much pitch black in the park and we were running in between and around families, trying not to step on dogs that were playing catch, jumping up and over benches, and finally - we see Jesus!
Santo Miercoles (Holy Wednesday)
Wednesday morning both Nikki and I were exhausted - and quite frankly a bit paso-ed out. We decided we wanted to have a slow, Spanish day. After quick taking care of a few errands, we spent some time in a park and then headed into el centro to find a cafe that had chocolate croissants, tea for Nikki and coffee for me. Well, we should have know better. We didn't make it more than two or three blocks before we ran into La Sed. After watching the Virgen come across the bridge of los bomberos (firefighters - their station is underneath the bridge) we continued on our adventure only to run into the Virgen of San Bernando a few blocks further. From there we decided to get adventurous and head over to the area that Javier took us to in search of our croissants. Naturally, we ran into another paso. Actually, it wasn't a paso - it was a group of people waiting for a paso to start. We were waiting for a salida! After a good hour and a half, standing with some not-so-nice Spaniards, we finally saw El Buen Fin exit their church and head out to walk in the streets of Sevilla.
Santo Jueves (Holy Thursday) y La Madruga
The plan for Santo Jueves was pretty much to take the day nice and slowly since I had plans to watch La Madruga which is pretty much the best night in all of Semana Santa. The processions go all night long and consist of the most famous pasos: La Macarena, El Silenco, Los Gitanos, El Gran Poder... Well, that morning Nikki and I got together at McDonald's to use their WiFi and get to work on a group project we had coming up. Then I spent some time in a park reading my Bible, and headed home for some lunch and a nap. Well, I guess all of the paso watching from earlier in the week caught up to me and I ended up sleeping through my alarm until Friday morning! :( So, I failed and ended up missing La Madruga.
Santo Viernes
On Friday I was able to meet up with fellow Iowa Hawkeye, Kate Singer. We spent the day on the river watching pasos go over el Puente de Triana. We watched El Cachorro and La O and in between the two, (in an attempt to get out of the huge crowd and the hot sun) we walked through the neighborhood of Triana in search of some ice cream. We did indeed find some ice cream - however the woman that served us our ice cream could have used a Coldstone Creamery employee training session. Not only did the concept of, "Service with a Smile" seem entirely foreign to her (like us), but she gave us the most pathetically sad scoop of ice cream that has ever been seen on the face of the Earth and called it an ICE CREAM CONE. I was shocked and dismayed. Luckily we were able to see La O right afterwards, and we watched a Spongebob Squarepants balloon float up into the sky. After the pasos we spent the early evening walking through El Parque Santa Maria Luisa.
Santo Sabado
Kendra returned from her trip to Italy late Friday night so she and I spent Saturday catching up. We started with a study session at Starbucks, did some window shopping in el centro (while surprisingly managing to avoid pasos) and then headed down to the river. We sat out at a little cafe for a couple of hours and enjoyed the warm sun, and then went to El Corte Ingles to buy some snacks for our movie night. Then the pasos came full force. When we were walking out of El Corte Ingles en the plaza el Duque we were literally surrounded. There was no escape. There was one paso that covered one side of the store, and another blocking the other two exits. After a lot of weaving in and out and walking way out of our way just to be able to walk we were on our way home. As we walked back along the river to el Torre del Oro and up to Puerta Jerez we ended up running into yet another paso: El Sol. We watched it for a good half hour and then made our way through it and back home. Just when we were about to sit down to eat we heard what sounded an awful lot like a Semana Santa band. And guess what, it was! And we got to watch all of it from our patio. It was really cool to watch it from up above.
Pascua (Easter)
The plans for my Easter involved waking up at 4 am to watch the salida of the final paso, El Resucitado. That didn't quite work out as planned. Instead I ended up rolling out of bed around 10 am, and sat around with my Bible and some homemade cafe (not delicious) and went on a walk with Kate and explored the parks of Sevilla. It was a very nice, slow, and wonderful day in Sevilla.
.... and that was my Semana Santa. I've realized now that I'm done writing this that it's probably going to seem super boring to you as you're reading it, but I insist- it really wasn't. It was awesome and I am so glad I stayed in Sevilla instead of traveling for the week.
¡Yay for Jesus and Parades!
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