Seville for Easter Time

The whole of Spain celebrates Semana Santa or Easter Week with processions, almost every small town has a pilgrimage, but to get value for your travelling money - hit Seville. The Passion parades are numerous and daily throughout the Holy Week, these processions leave from the cathedral at noon every day. Many of the churches in different districts also have their own street-walking train.

The midnight cavalcade on the eve of Good Friday is a real not-to-be missed event - moving and flamboyant at the same time. Although the theme is serious, these are religious processions organized by the church or cathedral brotherhoods, it’s difficult not to imagine them as tourist events.

Enormous floats or pasostrawl slowly and rhythmically through narrow people-lined streets. These floats are topped by huge ornate figures of a blood-stained, Jesus Christ complete with a crown of thorns, or the Virgin Mary weeping, but not in mourning clothes.

Pasos also means steps, and that’s what the bearers of the floats, which can weigh several tones, take, slow shuffling steps, bearing the weight of Christ on their shoulders. The bearers of the larger floats are often hidden under heavy sweat-making curtains, while the bearers of smaller floats can be seen carrying their burden on its long supporting posts.

Bedecked Roman soldiers and gown garbed penitents with high pointed face-covering masks and bare-footed cross-carrying penitents all process in silence and solemnity slowly but surely on their pilgrimage.

Passers-by on the other hand are out for a visual experience and a fiesta time, bars ooze, tapas abound but a Spanish fiesta is usually complete with an excess of fireworks to accompany the party atmosphere, but not in Holy Week.

The partying continues until the early hours, and of course the dry and warmer climate usually allows this.

A spectacle yes, but a party? For many it is and for many it isn’t, these traditions have gone on for centuries, except for a time when General Franco tried to stop them. He didn’t succeed, and now the government actually encourages them and advertises them, a far cry from the underground processions.

The procession figures, in many cases, are of immense value, some are hundreds of years old, and all of course as religious symbols, beyond value.

Whether you attend an Easter parade in Spain for entertainment or religious reasons, its one of life’s experiences you won’t forget in a hurry, like the pasos it’ll shuffle along with you.

See here for more information on Andalucia.

Float Bearers

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