An Overview of Semana Santa in Sevilla

What a week! Only been here a couple of weeks and you can´t get much more immersed than being caught up in a procession, in particular, following a float for about an hour with a bunch of religious Spanish women!

Semana Santa is a big deal generally in Spain and it´s something I´ve wanted to experience properly for ages, so when everyone told me that it would probably rain and nothing would leave the Churches, I was a little down-hearted. However, it didn´t rain too much and they were cancelled about three days in total. I also got to experience getting absolutely soaked whilst waiting for a procession and now have the cold to prove it. ´The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain´ is frankly a load of rubbish, at least when it comes to Semana Santa.

       

Food

Semana Santa isn´t a wholly religious affair, a lot of people see it as a tradition and of course a chance to get some time off work and eat some special Semana Santa food. When work told me we were having a Semana Santa breakfast and to bring an English cake, I had no idea what that the breakfast would be about three tables of cake, churros, sugar and coffee. One of the nicest (and sweetest) things I tried was torrijas which is bread soaked in milk and a little wine, then dipped in egg and fried, then they put cinnamon or honey on them.

         

La Madrugá

The Madrugá is Good Friday morning and is the most religious and busy time here in Sevilla. By morning, I mean morning. The floats (or pasos) leave around midnight and return back to their Churches late morning. I wasn´t feeling quite Spanish enough to do an all-nighter, so I decided to get a few hours sleep and then get up at 2.30am to go into town and experience the Madrugá all the way till 8.30am. As I´m writing this my body clock still seems to be feeling the effects a bit, despite sleeping most of the rest of Friday. It was worth every sleepless minute though! I feel that I can now say that I have fully experienced Spanish Semana Santa. Being the organised cultural person I am, I made a plan to go and view three of the six the pasos from a few different places where there hopefully wouldn´t be to many people, however, I ended up passing the Cathedral, seeing a paso when I arrived and staying as it wasn´t too crowded and there was a pretty good view and backdrop (you can´t really top a paso entering the Cathedral).

       

I can understand why it wouldn´t be everyone´s cup of tea, as one of my colleague´s sons said ´all the floats look the same´ and waiting at 3.30 in the morning in the cold isn´t ideal, but as a foreigner it was pretty enjoyable and a good experience.

Off again!

What a busy week it has been, for those of you who don’t know, I’m now in sunny Sevilla working as a translator for the University of Sevilla. I’m pretty darn pleased with myself at the moment as I’ve had the most productive week ever (hence a very long post)! Not everyone is aware how slow the Spanish really are with bureaucracy, the French have a lot, the Spanish have more and are less organised and slower (those in Italy will probably tell me it’s even worse out there!)

First day here I found an apartment (pretty quickly as I had a list already prepared and times sorted for viewings). I’m living with the landlady and another English girl called Toni. The place is pretty close to work and town and it’s kept pretty clean so I’m lucky, just a shame there aren’t more Spanish people living here! I was invited out salsa on my first night by my landlady’s daughter, but after all the travelling and walking I just couldn’t hack it. 

Second day I started work, what a waste of time and talk about awkward! They had no desk or computer or even space for me, I was hanging around for what seemed like ages and then put in a random room and given a piece of translated work to check = boring! However, the ladies who work in the same room are lovely and were chatty and I think I could grow to like it in there. Tomorrow is a fiesta/desayuno (party/breakfast) and everyone is taking in cake, that’s incentive enough to get in early. I’ve made a lemon drizzle, which considering I had no scales, the wrong flour and sugar, an oven I don’t know, etc. it’s pretty good, I hope they like it.

Third day I went to go and sort out NIE (a sort of work permit for Spain, without it you can’t work and you can’t get a bank account, so it’s pretty important). Thankfully they let me do this in work time and Jack came along to help out. Unfortunately the first day, after waiting 45 minutes to get an appointment, I needed the landlady’s signature for something which I didn’t know I needed so we decided to start again on day four. Day four was very successful, we arrived at the office too early so went for a coffee/orange juice, arrived and was seen in 5 minutes. My boss at work had told me that you have to cry in this office in order to get the permit in less than 15 days, I’m not one for putting on the waterworks. I was in luck, the lady was so helpful, she said I’d have to wait 5 days for it and I politely but bluntly said that it wasn’t possible and I needed it today to start work and get an account and she did it for me within 20 minutes! The rest of the process was just as easy, barely any waiting and polite people. I even got a Spanish bank account in the same day! So it goes to show that not everyone is incompetent with bureaucracy!

I’ve wandered around the old town a bit, having been here twice before it’s nice to know that I’m going to discover different things and not necessarily the tourist traps, I also tried on my first Flamenco dress and fell in love. I've already been on a trip out of Sevilla to the beach with Toni and 7 of her friends (all English). We visited El Rocio which looks like a mini Texas in Spain with people wandering around on horses, and then the beach which was comfortably warm – even enough for me to wear a bikini!

I think the highlight of this week was yesterday. After being given something to actually translate myself the day had already started well. I then decided I wanted some experience in Secondary Schools, so I printed off about 10 CVs and cover letters and planned the route to visit them all. The receptionist in the first one I walked into told me to hang on 5 mins till the classes finished and I was then greeted by an English teacher (non-native) who was amazed that I wanted to volunteer and that I was a native speaker. Then another one came along (also non-native) who told me that I fell out of heaven (easily the best compliment of the week). They didn’t even take my CV or letter, or even my surname, and then they started fighting over who would get me first! The teacher who saw me first didn’t have any lessons that afternoon, so the second one took me up to his class straight away! The class was great, such a good level for 15 year-olds and they loved having an English person. The teacher took advantage that I did IB and got the class to quiz me about it as it was a prep-IB class. Before the end of the lesson I had 3 students who want to come to England with me and another few who want to teach me Sevillanas in the next lesson! This volunteer work is going to beat translation easily, I can’t wait to start after Easter.

Not bad for a week!