Semana Santa

                About two weeks ago, España had a 10 day break of school to celebrate Semana Santa, known in English as Holy Week. Holy Week here should be on everybody’s bucket list in my opinion. It was nothing like I’d ever seen before. It started Saturday, April 1^st. Holy Week here is filled with processions throughout the city of floats, first with a depiction of Jesus followed by a float of the Virgin Mary. The whole procession has an order that every procession follows. (keep in mind, this is a rough description) It always starts with someone carrying a cross in the front, then a lot of people dressed up in pointy face covers (more about that later) then some depiction of Jesus, then women dressed in black with big black veils on carrying a rosary, and followed by the Virgin Mary.

                For any American, the sight of the uniforms for the persons of these processions is a bit unsettling at first. Why you ask? Well, the sight of these uniforms is linked to a horrible time in our history and quite an awful group, the Ku Klux Klan. The uniforms are a large cloak with one of the pointy head pieces where you can only see the eyes. Each procession has a designated color ranging from blue to deep purple to brown to white (where it really reminds you of the KKK) 

The uniforms from the first procession we saw

The paso of Jesus on a donkey

The women in black veils with a rosary that always precede the Virgin Mary float

The Virgin Mary paso

Each procession also has a name. Some of the ones that I saw included Jesus’ sentencing, the Last Supper, and the Penetencia. The floats or ‘pasos’ are extremely large and very heavy. This gets interesting with the streets of Granada because some of the streets are very narrow. The people who carry the pasos are called ‘costaleros. And yes, you did read that correctly, people carry these giant things. There are, on average, 30-60 costaleros for each paso. Well, logically the question comes up of ‘Why would they have people carry this extremely heavy float when, well, they know the wheel exists’ (Seinfeld reference? I’ll put a little refresher in: I'll tell you what I like about Chinese people. They're hanging in there with the chopsticks,aren't they? You know they've seen the fork. They're staying with the sticks. I don't know how they missed it. Chinese farmer gets up, works in the field with a shovel all day. Shovel. Spoon. Come on. You're not plowing 40 acres with a couple of pool cues!) I was curious about this as well so, while I was learning in my Flamenco class about Semana Santa, I asked this question to my professor. It turns out the people feel extremely honored when they get to carry the paso. The crowd also loves the illusion of movement that happens when people carry it. The costaleros are hidden underneath and the movements from them walking makes the figures of Jesus, Mary, the disciples, etc. look like they’re actually moving too and are real. The crowds go crazy for this life like-ness. 

The feet of the costaleros underneath the paso

More of the outfits from the processions

A paso of Jesus in Plaza Trinidad

This is the outfit that the costaleros wear while underneath the paso

The Virgin Mary squeezing between some of the narrow streets in Plaza Trinidad

Some of the white outfits at night

Yeah, real freaky for anyone who has studied American history

One of the larger Jesus paso's

                I saw a total of 5 processions in the one day I was in Granada for Semana Santa before heading out to Mallorca. One of my friends, Maria Angeles and her sister, Eva, love going around seeing all of them so they took me along with them! It was a lot of fun and nice to have people who were knowledgeable as to where everything was, the names, etc.

                In the middle of Semana Santa, I left a rainy and chilly Granada for the island of Mallorca (which, actually was rainy and chill for the second day we were there but I digress). The rest of the days in Mallorca were sunny, beautiful and a bit windy. The beach and beachy atmosphere of the city were very nice and appropriate for a little beach vacay :)

Beautiful Mallorca

:)

A lovely day at the beach watching all the windsurfers in the background

Our view from coffee at one of Kristen's favorite places

                That sums up my Semana Santa. It was much different than anything I had ever experience in the US. Holy Week is a huge deal here and I wasn’t accustomed to that from the states. It was such a cool sight to see!