Wednesday 11 April 2012

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.


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