EASTER

Holy Week in Seville (Spanish: Semana Santa de Sevilla) is one of the most important traditional events of the city. It is celebrated in the week leading up to Easter (Holy Week among Christians), and is one of the better known religious events in Spain. This week shows the procession of pasos, floats of lifelike wooden sculptures of individual scenes of the events of the Virgin Mary showing restrained grief for the torture and killing of her Son. Some of the sculptures are of great antiquity and are considered artistic masterpieces, as well as being culturally and spiritually important to the local Catholic population.

During the Holy Week, the city is crowded with visitors, drawn by the spectacle and atmophere. The impact is particulary strong for the catholic community. The processions are organized by hermandades and cofradias, religious brotherhoods. During the proccesions, members precede the pasos (of which there are up to three in each proccesion) dressed in penitential robes, and hoods. They may also be accompained by brass bands.

The processions work along a disignated route from their home churches and chapels to the Cathedral and back . 

The processions from the surburban barrios may take 14 hours to return to their home churches . A total of 60 proocessions are scheduled for the week, from Palm Sunday morning . The climax of the week is the night of the Holy Thursday, when the most popular processions set out to arrive at the Cathedral on the dawn of Good Friday, known as the madrugá.

Asunción Naranjo Naranjo

Irene Jiménez García, 1º eso B