With a total of eight days of classes in the entire month of April, it’s been hard to remind myself that I’m studying abroad. The entire city of Sevilla launches into a quasi-party for the whole month and we are more or less forced to be given two spring breaks because everything in the city is otherwise closed.
Last week was Semana Santa, or Holy Week. Spain is a Catholic country and takes the entire week very seriously, though no city does it like Sevilla. For weeks leading up to Palm Sunday the entire city endured a makeover to accompany the influx of people who were coming to the city to watch pasos, or processions that take place every day of Semana Santa.
Our program and our teachers warned us. The city goes crazy. We noticed. Guardrails were set up all over sidewalks, hundreds of chairs lined the side of the road, and even traffic lights were taken down so to not obscure the view of the processions.
The processions’ history goes hundreds of years back. Various churches across the city have their own brotherhoods that will parade through the streets. Each brotherhood typically has two floats decked out with statues of Mary or Jesus, covered in flowers and candles. The other participants in the procession are called nazarenos and wear a costume that covers their entire body. To an American, they are dressed like the Ku Klux Klan, pointed hoods with eye slits and all. But their dress is religious, and many go so far as to not even wear shoes with the ensemble.
My parents and younger brother came to visit me for the week. After a warning about the very foreign dress, we headed out to watch a few processions. We started out by car—a very poor choice. The entire city shuts down and main roads are blocked off to let the processions pass. It seems as though every building in the city is empty and every resident is out on the streets to watch. The sevillanos are dressed to the nines just to stand in the street and marvel at these floats with hundreds of candles and pouring incense. It’s a pretty powerful thing to see and to watch the audience in their devotion to the statues that ride on the floats.
However, like I said, this is a party for them as well. We set up to watch one procession from the inside of a bar outside a church. Only it started raining (very rare for Sevilla) and it had to be cancelled. So instead the nazarenos came into the bar, pulled off their hoods, and started drinking with their family and friends who had come to watch the paseo.
A lot of residents of Sevilla stay for a few days and when they are tired of the crowds, they travel. We followed. My family and I took a trip to Granada, home of the Alhambra and a hippie population that lives in the hills. We then headed to the Costa del Sol to Nerja. The city is highly popular with British expats and it was easy to see why. The Mediterranean sparkles from the view from the Balcony of Europe, there were caves to explore, and the tiny city center was packed with bars and restaurants.
All too soon, my first spring break was over. I headed to a week of classes where, although the semester is starting to come to a close, the work on semester long projects is heating up. Discipline is going to be a little difficult, with Spain’s next party, Feria de Abril, and trips to Portugal, Amsterdam, and Prague all coming up….