Semana Santa

It's Holy Week here in Spain. It takes the Easter holidays to a whole new level. Semana Santa is basically a centuries old tradition of celebrating and honoring the passion of Christ in a week of pasos or floats that weight 1 ton or more and are carried by 30 to 40 men, that every so slowly, step by step, go through the city. This process takes 8 hours or more. The Holy Week processions are led first by musicians, playing a funeral dirge type music, followed by scary KKK looking guys called "Nazarenos". These people can be male, female, and children very young. After them is followed by a paso, usually with a depiction of Christ's way to the cross. Regardless of what you believe, it is still a moving sight to be hold. There are throngs of people waiting hours to see one paso go by and you wouldnt believe the silence that over takes the crowd as it passes by. It gives me chills and how eerily symbolic and ritualistic it is. Next paso, features the Virgin Mary. This paso too, weighs between a 1 ton or more.

Last night I went to view two pasos, one was the paso de San Bernarndo. This paso featured Christ on the cross. I went and viewed pasos with a former professor of mine here, who's a grad student and her Sevilla friends, a couple who is studying English at the Univeristy of Seville. They invited me to go with them to the guy's hometown of Santiponce, you may remember that it is also the home to the Roman ruins of Italica. The paso of Italica featured Christ carrying the cross. The moving part of this is how they manage to take the paso through town and into the parish chapel. 40 guys simultaneous, who are basically going in blind have to go backwards on their knees, manuever the paso into the church. Quite, moving and incredible. To do this they "showboated" first and made the paso move and dance. Before the paso went into the church, there was a lament and ballad style prayer to the paso, sung acapella. Very moving and gave me chills. The next paso was of the Virgin Mary, there was also another ballad sung to her. No one talked and paid reverance to both pasos. For one day, everyone was Catholic.

What was cool about the experience, is here I was probably the only Texas, much less the only other American, besides my teacher, who witnessed this paso in a small town setting.

Oh yeah, I spoke mainly Spanish for 6 hours.


Viva la vida and viva la aventura!


It'll be bittersweet when I leave in less than a month.