Semana Santa Fiesta in Spain
Andalucia Hosts a Parade of Floats, Incensarios, Gypsies & Penitents
Steer clear of the textbook examples of Holy Week in Spain if you want to see something other than a public show.
Some say that Semana Santa in Spain has lost its religious context, and has become just another fiesta. Perhaps so, but in no other fiesta are such feats of physical and spiritual effort witnessed, nor such stirring music and rhythms played. If this marks the end of religion, then it perhaps signifies the return of spirituality.
On Good Friday people gathered to witness the final days processions in a small town outside of Granada in Andalucia. The Guardia Civil were unusually present in their semi-military uniforms with obligatory berets and dark sunglasses. Then a band started up and the Ermita doors swung open as the first columns filed out dressed in red and black silk and pointed masks that reached up to the heavens. Accompanied by the national anthem, the figure of Mary swung on her raised platform, dancing, with her arms open in a public embrace.
The Incense Dancers
As the float edged out, from a side- street a group of eight men marched single file to the end of the street and then in formation turned and marched back to end up in front of the virgin, two rows of four facing each other: The incensarios had arrived with their buckled black shoes, bow tied waistbands, emblematic tiered hats and stockinged feet. They shuffled their incense chains in rhythm and began a song (known as a satira as opposed to the normal saeta) and concluded with a dance, a bow and then smothered the float with incense before rushing away down a cobbled alleyway.
As another float emerged from the Ermita, another group of Incensarios appeared to perform their variation. This is a lost tradition from most towns, something so unseen that it leaves you with an unforgetable taste of the authentic. Semana Santa is hardly an undiscovered tourist secret, but if you look away from the main cities of Sevilla, Malaga and Granada you can still find these faithful and undiluted gems.
The band struck up and the processions moved on. After Mary came Jesus and behind him a group of local gypsies, odd shaped and all bearing those haircuts unique to this Andalucian group. Many of the women were barefooted and chained at wrist and ankle for the whole day´s walk. They had individually sworn a pact with Christ to suffer penitence in return for favours.
Later the rain began, a light drizzle followed by a downpour and the plastic sheets emerged to cover the religious effigies. But the band played on. The chains on the penitents began to rust and the Incensarios´ dance became precarious on the watery surface. It was all part of the once yearly challenge: The muscle ache, the damp clothes, the waterlogged trombone.
Twelve hours of marching and the processional floats returned to the start, where accompanied by pagan drum rhythms the carriers ran uphill the last few hundred yards carrying the huge float above them. Their sweat, lost in the torrential rain as they reached the Ermita´s open doors.
