Spain! Spain! Spain!: Semana Santa en Sevilla

Or for you Americanos…“Holy week in Seville”

traditional wear during Semana Santa

If you don’t already know, Holy Week (the week leading up to Easter) is HUGE in Spain and Seville is the most known for their Holy Week. So E had a great idea for us to stay in Seville (after getting back from Morocco) to see all the activity. It’s one of those things that ALL Spanish people will tell you that you HAVE TO DO if you visit Spain, along with being in Cordoba for ferria, Pamplona for running of the bulls, Valencia for Las Fallas or any local festival of any town you visit. So basically you just need to live in Spain and travel everywhere within it. Ok, you get my point.

Back to Seville.

The whole point to being there that week was to see the processions, along with the estimated 1 million people who had come to do the same thing. And I think we couldn’t have chosen a better year. Let me explain why…

One thing happens every time around this week. Can you guess what it is?

spongebob is EVERYWHERE

RAIN.

Its now a long standing joke but it does create a huge problem. The processions can’t go outside when it rains. These "statues" are hundreds of years old and the people don’t get super excited about them possibly getting ruined in the rain. So, it becomes a problem. Last year the rain was horrible and barely any processions happened at all. This year we were a bit luckier although there were a couple cancelled processions and many empty seats.

Usually, since so many people come to see the processions, there are enormous crowds and you have to wait a while before a procession starts to get a good spot to even be able to see anything (imagine an important parade happening in a large city in the states). This year however it kept sprinkling, enough so that many people didn’t want to come out because they probably thought the processions would be cancelled but in fact, not enough rain for them to actually cancel. So that meant we got great spots to see everything happen. And the max time we waited: 10min

Every time we heard some “procession music” or saw a large crowd, we joined in and saw another procession. Couldn’t have been better (or more convenient for that matter).

All the processions we saw were stunning. They really were unique in Seville and well worth the visit.

*Random info- for those who don’t know, each procession has its own unique “statues” that tell the story of Jesus being crucified, or as we would say, The Easter Story. Therefore each day brings new parts of the story to the anticipating crowds. We only saw 3 distinct ones but they were all beautiful and with wonderfully orchestrated music. Here’s a video of one: (it's not loading correctly now, I'll get to it soon)

The rest of the time when we weren’t watching Jesus and Virgin Mary being carried through the streets, we were chillin out at a tapas bar or a café. We got to try some tapas that Seville is known for like pringá (slow cooked pork) and adobo (specially seasoned friend dogfish), both of which were DELICIOUS!

this is a sandwich with pringa

One evening we found ourselves in a small café waiting for some processions to start. We decided the best way to spend our time there, besides drinking some coffees, was to play around with the settings on our cameras. These were the results: