Semana Santa

Posted by Nicki

Hey all! I hear the weather is getting nice in Minneapolis, so I hope you all are getting a chance to enjoy some sunshine!

Things on our trip are going very well. Our time in Sevilla for the semana santa festival was great, it was definitely very interesting to see. Thanks to Jeff for recommending it. Although our ride to seville was not the most comfortable, and we had to wait all day to get a hostel room so we could sleep, but once we got there, all was good. Our hostel was right on the main procession route, so we basically got a free pass to see all the festivities, the only draw back was the drums beating at 4am.

For those who are unaware, Semana Santa is basically a week long celebration of the Easter holiday that occurs throughout Spain, however the largest of all these celebration occurs in Sevilla. Now, neither Emily, Alex, nor myself are anything close to Catholic, but seeing how huge this event was was definitely quite an incredible sight. The processions go on throughout the whole week, day and night, on thursday they go on literally all night long. The consist mainly of people, young and old, walking through the streets in hooded cloaks (think KKK type outfits in all different colors) carrying 3 or 4 foot long solid wax candles. The candles pass by so many times that in the morning all the streets are coated with a thick covering of wax in a variety of colors. Young children have a great time running up the cloaked figures asking for a bit of wax to add to huge balls. In addition, huge floats are carried by men marching underneath, they represent various catholic easter scenes and are covered in flowers and rows and rows of candles. Our hostel concierge guy told us that people make a prayer to their church, and then if their prayers are answered, they walk in the festival processions the following year, the bigger the prayer, the bigger the duty they take up, from walking to carrying the floats.







Chairs set up for processions

Wax drippings from candles

I have never seen anything quite like semana santa, so I was for sure glad that we had the opportunity. I felt like it was a definite cultural experience for all of us.