Views from the City: Semana Santa

Seeing that I live in a predominantly Catholic Country, Holy Week is an incredibly important holiday for many Spaniards for various reasons. On a secular level, educational institutions grant their students a week's vacation while firms and public institutions will shut down on Holy Thursday and Good Friday for that week.

On a religious level, the holiday marks the return of the procesiónes, processions, that form the foundation of the Holy Week celebrations of Spain. The processions have various components that deserve some attention. At the center of each procession is a paso, a statue or image of the Virgin Mary or Jesus in the midst of the passion, crucified, or buried in his sepulchre that rests on a trono, a throne. These images have distinct names and historic assocition with a particular civil group, parish, or brotherhood that takes on the task of organzing the process each year.

A paso being crowned by a priest

Members of civic groups, brotherhoods, and parishes carry these images while bands consisting of woodwinds, brass horns, and drums play solemn music accompany them as they travel along a set path in the city. The age of the participants is quite diverse among the cadre of musicians in these processions. It appeared that older men dressed in military garb tend to lead the processions with elderly women wearing mantillas walking at their side.

A group of drummers from a procession on Easter Sunday

In many cases, the individuals carrying the image are dressed in nazarenos, which consist of a capirote, a mask with a conical tip and a long robe. Although many Americans associate this garb with the KKK - ironically, an anti-Catholic organization - the uniform came from medival Spain where individuals would wear these garments as a means to repent for their sins while remaining anonymous. The color of the nazarenos various from procession to procession, often time reflecting a group's historic use of a color for cultural and religious reasons.

Individuals wearing the nazarenos

In Madrid, where I witnessed this event, the processions travel along a path in the city center that includes the historic main square, plaza mayor, and the streets along Sol, the center of the city. The pace is slow; the procession will walk for five minutes before stopping in place for a while to allow the men dressed in the nazarenos to rest. This practice also allows bystanders to focus on other processions that are moving ahead or walking behind the group. Once the procession is over, the participants carry the image to a Church in the city center for display as bystanders either follow the image or return to the path to watch another procession.


In other cities such as Sevilla, which is famous for its Holy Week processions, the groups travel around the Cathedral from neighborhoods around the city in a coordinated act of piety that engulfs the city's streets in a sea of bystanders and participants carrying the images, many of which trace back hundreds of years.

It is a truly moving sight, considering the solemn nature of the proceedings and the restraint grief that grips the faces of the participants in the processions. Given that mass displays of religious devotion is not a common sight in the public sphere in the States, moreover, these processions give us a dramatic glimpse into the the complex relationship between the Catholic Church and Spain's civil society that has shaped its culture since the Middle Ages.