SEVILLE, Spain — Each spring, for one week, Seville transforms. The scent of orange blossoms mixes with heady incense. Booming drums and soaring brass bands echo down narrow streets. Gilded floats topped with life-like statues and vibrant floral arrangements are carried across cobblestones in elaborate processions.
These parades unite pageantry, penance and tradition in a display so beautiful that it touches the hearts, even of those who don't believe in their underlying message. This is Seville's Holy Week, known as Semana Santa.
From Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday, the city's historic center strains at the seams. People bus in from surrounding neighborhoods and towns. Tourists are drawn to the spectacle from other parts of Spain and abroad. Over this week, 61 Catholic brotherhoods snake through the city along the official parade route to Seville's Gothic cathedral and then back to their home churches.
For many city residents, these processions are deeply sacred. "Holy Week means an expression of faith," said Maite Olivares. She expresses her faith in a way unique to Spain and typical of this region, with the saeta. It's a passionate flamenco song, sung a cappella and often improvised, dedicated to Jesus and the Virgin Mary.
"It's something so intimate and so explosive," Olivares said, describing the wild mix of emotions she feels while singing saeta. "It's an implosion of everything in a single expression."
Olivares is one of a shrinking number of Spaniards who identify as Catholic. Fifty years ago, just after the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, about 90% of residents were Catholic. Now, that number is 46%, according to the most recent government-funded survey on the topic.
However, even Spaniards who aren't religious find meaning in these rich cultural displays. María Ángeles Bermudo is among them. She said she's not an atheist, but she doesn't identify as religious either. Still, Semana Santa processions make an impact on her.
"I get emotional as if it were something religious," she said, "because I've been watching it since I was a little girl. It's something very familiar to me."
These processions are part of a family tradition for Bermudo. Her father used to march in the procession as part of a religious brotherhood, and so did her husband. This year, she was standing on the parade route waiting for her daughter to pass by.
The brotherhoods of Semana Santa
Thousands of members of these brotherhoods — which are open to Catholic men and women of all ages — participate in the processions. Many are dressed as nazarenos, wearing tunics, capes or robes and a pointed hood. While to an American eye, they may look like the sinister attire worn by members of the Ku Klux Klan, the regalia worn by nazarenos long predates the existence of the white supremacist group. In fact, the pointed hoods of nazarenos are inspired by clothes used to shame sinners during the Spanish Inquisition. Today, they've taken on a new meaning, with nazarenos willingly wearing them, symbolizing penitence and becoming closer to God.
For many of those walking the procession route, this is still a serious act of penance. Some nazarenos walk barefoot. Other members of the brotherhoods may carry a wooden cross.
Each brotherhood has its own symbols, colors and overall tone. People who wear white or bright colors typically have more lively processions, while those that dress in black are more somber. They walk in silence or with sparse music.
Each brotherhood is responsible for carrying different statues to the cathedral. The sculptures of Christ represent different scenes from the Passion of Christ. Large statues of the Virgin Mary show her in various states of mourning, even in anguish. Others portray her expressing a sense of hope. These statues are often more than a hundred years old and are symbols of great pride for their neighborhood parishes.
Transporting them to the cathedral is a logistical and physical challenge. In the days before Holy Week, the statues are hoisted onto large platforms with rows of parallel wooden beams running underneath. Then teams of strong men work in shifts to lift and carry floats — which weigh thousands of pounds through the streets, largely unable to see where they're going.
Traditions carry forward
Many traditions have developed around this week in Seville, especially for kids. Children line the parade routes and hold out their hands to ask nazarenos for candies and devotional cards with images of their brotherhood's statues.
Children also bring wadded up balls of aluminum foil to nighttime processions, when nazarenos carry lit candles. They ask the hooded figures to pour melted wax onto the foil; after years of attending processions and adding layers of wax, the balls can reach the size of a cantaloupe.
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