Semana Santa: Holy Week processions in Spain

Celebrated through religious processions and festivities leading up to Easter Sunday, Semana Santa, the holiest week in the Spanish calendar, has begun.

This week-long honouring of Jesus is “the most important religious celebration in Spain”, said Lonely Planet, and it will be more “fervent than ever in 2023” after the global Covid-19 pandemic saw events curtailed for the past three years.

Those travelling in Spain will witness Virgin Mary floats, scores of women mourning in black – and “the main event” – processions of religious brotherhoods in long robes and pointed hats walking along cobbled streets.

The attire of these brotherhoods, or “cofradias”, is rather shocking to visitors, said Murcia Today, as they remind many of “unsavoury groups” such as the Klu Klux Klan, based in the Southern US during the 50s and 60s. But the regalia is a sign of “deep respect”, said the paper, and is representative of each brotherhood’s “unique history”.

Along with the processions, parades and marching bands, many Spaniards will attend special masses in remembrance of Jesus’s crucifixion, and either fast or offer penance. Many shops and restaurants will shut during this week as many individuals return home for a week of “family time”.

Nearly every town in Spain throws at least one parade during this important week in the Catholic calendar, but some places go “the extra mile”, said The Olive Press. On Tuesday, in Verges, two adults and three children danced in skeleton attire in a tradition that dates back to the “terror of the plague” in the Middle Ages.

And if you’re visiting Valencia on Saturday make sure to “take an umbrella”, said the paper. Pots and old ceramic dishes are thrown out of windows during the city’s celebratory firework display in commemoration of Christ’s Resurrection – and “water is regularly dumped on unwary visitors too”.