Holy Week in Seville

Tom & John Shopping for Hats

The start of a procession

After finishing up in Barcelona, the four of us boarded the AVE Train and headed 180 mph to Seville.  The large draw to Seville was the fact that it was the site of one of the oldest and most tradition-rich Holy Week celebrations in the world called Semana Santa.  

The view from our hotel window

To fully explain all of the details of the Holy Week celebration in Seville would truly take pages so I will do my best to summarize.  At some point during Holy Week, each Catholic parish in all of Seville will lead a procession through the streets of Seville from their parish church into the Cathedral (in the center of the city) and back to their parish church. The procession is led by hundreds of members of the parish, often men and sometimes barefoot, all wearing pointed hats and holding large wooden crosses or tall white candles.  In the middle of the procession there is a coach (mostly made of gold but sometimes tin).  Each coach is decorated beautifully with statues, decorative designs and more candles.  Some of the coaches date back to the 17^th century and can weigh over 4500 pounds.  These floats are carried through the streets by up to 20 men for around 8 hours total.  To march in the procession and/or carry the float is viewed as one of the greatest honors of a lifetime and respected widely.   The largest procession are on Good Friday and begin at midnight and last until the early morning. 

One of many coaches

Yes, we were THAT close

We arrived on a Wednesday with most of the larger Holy Week celebrations ahead of us.  Within moments of arriving at our hotel, it was obvious that our time in Seville would be more than just wandering to a few tourist sites and taking in the culture.  The entire city had been transformed solely for the purpose of commemorating Holy Week.  The streets were filled with people and larger areas were lined with wooden chairs in preparation for the large Good Friday celebrations.  Our hotel was right on one of the main procession routes, which made for a convenient place to watch the procession but also made our hotel quite inaccessible when we were away from it while a procession was going on (more on that later).

Men preparing to carry a coach

 Our time in Seville was truly amazing and it would later be looked at as our favorite stop during our 17 days in Spain.  We passed the time on Wednesday and Thursday walking through the streets, stopping for tapas when we were hungry and beer and sangria when we were thirsty.  It was great to walk along the old cobblestone streets, which by this point in the week were mostly covered with candle wax from the multiple processions that had filled these same streets the days and nights before.  When processions were going on, we stopped and watched along the streets just as thousands of people did.  Wednesday night we stopped about a block from our hotel to watch one last procession before going to bed.  What we didn’t plan for was being unable to actually get to our hotel as the streets were filled with so many people that we literally could not move.  The downside was that it resulted in us standing for 3-4 hours before the crowd receded enough for us to reach our hotel.  The upside was the fact that we truly had a front row seat to the procession and were able to reach out and touch the coaches as they passed right in front of us.  After quite the ordeal, Katie and I were exhausted and headed straight for bed while Tom and Rhonda headed to the pub across the street from our hotel where they would quickly make friends with many of the locals.  

Ready for Bed

Ready to Party

Flamenco Dancing

Thursday was spent with more wandering through the streets and Thursday night, we attended a Flamenco show in an older, historic part of the town.  It was truly a cultural experience and a demonstration of artistic, musical and physical mastery that we will always remember.  After crawling in to bed Thursday night following a long day, we were awakened around midnight to the sound of drums at the end of the street.  As Katie and I threw open the curtains of our third story hotel room we were shocked to see the street filled with people preparing for another procession to pass by.  Needless to day, we got very little sleep that night and Tom, Rhonda, Katie and I all watched the early morning procession from right inside of our hotel room.  After the three hour procession, we headed to bed around 3 a.m. but were glad we stayed up to watch.

Plaza De Espana

Friday was spent at the Plaza de Espana, which was built in 1929 and is now a beautiful site of government offices and a large central square where many tourists fill the grounds.  It was definitely a lot of great photo opportunities and a great place to relax during our final day in Seville. 

As I said before, Seville was by far our favorite city that we visited in Spain.  I think this would have been the case even if it wasn’t Holy Week, but being there for the celebrations was a “cultural experience” in the truest sense of the phrase.  There is a certain charm to the city and a feeling of tradition that gives it a sense of authenticity that we didn’t find in the larger Spanish cities.  If we ever went back to Spain, Seville would be a must. 

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