This article on ThinkSpain says it well: "To be in Spain at Easter is to witness a series of ancient rituals that go to the heart of a country with a fiercely religious history."
To give you an idea of just how important all of this is to the Spanish, I was told by one of our host families that many people had been crying about the fact that it was raining on the day that they were supposed to be doing a procession. After months of organisation, they were distraught at the idea of not being able to actually perform this ritual.
I'm going to take my historical info from the above article, as it seems to know what it's talking about... and I don't. I'd heard that Spain at Easter was quite something, and I remembered being shown videos of the parades at university, but I was pretty keen to see one with my own eyes. When I found out that this school trip coincided with Easter Week, I was stoked!
To give you an idea of just how important all of this is to the Spanish, I was told by one of our host families that many people had been crying about the fact that it was raining on the day that they were supposed to be doing a procession. After months of organisation, they were distraught at the idea of not being able to actually perform this ritual.
I'm going to take my historical info from the above article, as it seems to know what it's talking about... and I don't. I'd heard that Spain at Easter was quite something, and I remembered being shown videos of the parades at university, but I was pretty keen to see one with my own eyes. When I found out that this school trip coincided with Easter Week, I was stoked!
So...
Palm Sunday: the start of Easter week. Most churches organise a parade, which represents Christ arriving in Jerusalem. People in the parades often carry a huge, leafy palm or olive branch which has been blessed in church.
For the rest of the week, they keep parading, but with a more sombre theme. It depends where you are, but there are people wearing thorny crowns, self-flagellators... These masochists sometimes start at first light and continue until 3-4am!
Apparently, on Easter Sunday, the mood turns jovial again. Flowers are added to the floats, and everyone eats traditional, sweet cakes.
I believe these guys here are part of a brotherhood. In Sevilla, there are 52, and they date back to the 13th century! The hoods are supposedly because they are penitents, who don't want to show their faces.
Not just for the older generation, clearly...
A huge crowd, assembled to see the end of the parade: the float with Jesus on the cross, and one with la Virgen.
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