Semana Santa

When I arrived back in Ecija on Friday evening before Easter weekend, I noticed the intoxicating scent of the orange trees!  My first month and a half here, the trees were covered with orange fruit, however now all the fruit has gone and the trees are loaded with white fragrant blossoms.  I absolutely love it, it makes walking about town so much more fun!

Things are starting to get a bit greener here, yet the countryside is still quite brown.  Here are some pictures I took on the bus ride from Sevilla (where the airport is) to Ecija.

On Saturday Michelle (the other au pair) and I went to Sevilla for Semana Santa, which means Holy Week in Spanish!  Easter celebrations in the southern part of Spain are some of the biggest in the world!!  Everyday the brotherhoods of the Catholic churches put on parades.  Each church has a slightly different route for their parade, which made it a bit confusing to figure out how to see them all since we did not have a street map, so we just winged it and everything ended up turning out alright.  The parades were incredible!!  Each brotherhood traditionally has 2-4 main carts with a swarm of people in front of and behind each cart that also march in the parade.  The carts are extremely elaborate displays of either Jesus or a crying virgin.  Here in Spain there is no such thing as the Easter Bunny.  However all the children are so excited about Semana Santa, they love every minute of it and both the children and parents have been talking about it for the past 6 weeks!  It was so nice to be somewhere that truly celebrates Easter and Christ.

The procession begins with a member of the brotherhood carying a cross.

This is followed by usually between 75-150 members of the brotherhood marching 4 abroad and carrying candles, followed by alter boys waving incense.

Let me first say that these outfits are in NO way meant to symbolize anything related to the KKK!!!!  These are the outfits of the brotherhoods.  The members are covered from head to toe in order to take away one's individuality, for Christ's sacrifice is not about them.  The hat is called the capirote and is a very longstanding tradition for Semana Santa.  The KKK actually took their uniform from these Semana Santa outfits because they like the anonymity of them.  However, the Catholic church has had this hat since middle ages, so this attire is in no way symbolic of anything that the KKK is known for.  I will say it was a bit weird at first because the relation between outfits like these are so strongly associated to the KKK in my mind.  However after the first procession I was able to separate the association and enjoy them for what they truly stood for.

Each brotherhood has different colored clothing.  We saw hunter green, purple, black, white, and blue.

Next is the "paso" or the big cart which is the main spectacle of each procession.  The carts are very big and extremely heavy.  They are carried by 35 men that fit underneath the box.  The laborous weight is supposed to reenact for them Christ carrying the cross before His crucifiction.  About every 15 minutes, the men would put the cart down briefly for a short rest.  Yet after only about 60 seconds of rest, they would literally throw it up in the air before letting it fall on top of their shoulders.  It was quite impressive!

 The was the first cart that I saw and definitely my favorite.  Although it was not no where near as elaborate as some of the others the music that accompanied the paso was perfect and very profound.  Following each cart is a marching band.  The music being played for this paso was so heartbreaking and truly painful.  Just when you thought that the trumpets could not possibly go any higher, they did.  The musical accompaniment really brought to life Jesus's suffering and sacrifice and left both Michelle and I with goosebumps.

The Marching Band

Here is a paso of a crying virgin, Mary, & Joseph

The sides of the paso are lavishly adorned with real roses, candles, and silver or gold.  I can't imagine how much money is spent on the roses alone!  But they were truly beautiful, each on flawless without any bruising or browning. 

After the first procession, Michelle and I had to run around Sevilla and figure out where the next procession was going to be passing through.  We didn't have a map, so we just winged it, but it turned out alright and we got a great spot with a pretty view

The next paso we saw was of the Virgin Mary carrying her Son

The lace draped cross looked so beautiful against the brilliant sun!  This was probably one of my favorite pictures that I took the whole day!

Jesus on His throne

Here is a good view of how big and ornate the carts are!  The virgin of this paso inside the cart is life size (as all are the people of the pasos); so that gives some perspective to how big the paso actually is!  In the front of the cart are so many candles with rose-shaped candles on the bottom 3 rows.

At the end of each procession they would have men walking and carrying crosses, sometimes these men would compete the 5 hour parade barefoot.  It was really makes you think about Jesus carrying his own cross.  I think this is such a neat thing for the men to do!

Here are some friends we made while waiting for the next procession.  They are members of the marching band and had just finished performing

I was able to catch a glimpse of this procession before it went into the church.  This was the last of Semana Santa that I saw in Sevilla!

 This paso was all gold with Jesus lying in a glass tomb on top.  The men you see in front of the carts are the directors that give the men carrying the cart instructions about where to turn and when to move forward since they cannot see anything.  Often these directors will also shout excitedly at the cart carriers to encourage them though the extremely long and laborious parade.

Here you can see Jesus a little better, the paso was so beautiful!  And it is going into the Grand Cathedral of Seville (the largest Gothic church in the world!)  The globs of red are probably 50 red roses in each clump!

The next morning was Easter Sunday!  So I got up and saw the two processions that Ecija held.  Luckily the church was only a 3 minute walk away from my house!  The processions here were definitely more relaxed and the walkers were at ease and talked with one another.  Everyone in the parade was just happy and excited, there were also lots of kids in these processions.  It was so fun to see the look of importance on their faces!

Jesus's Resurection!!

Carrying a cross with the Catholic brotherhood emblem

My last paso of Semana Santa was of this elaborate Virgin!  The processions went by fairly quickly that day, so after an hour I returned home to enjoy my Easter Sunday.