peter cottontail

two of the most important and famous festivals spanish culture has to offer (up there with tomatina, san fermines and las fallas) take place in sevilla. semana santa translates literally to “holy week” It takes place in the week leading up to easter Sunday starting on the previous sunday. the celebration centers around pasos in which the idols from the abundant churches throughout the city are placed on elaborately decorated platforms or palillos, which are then placed on the heads of a couple of dozen of the faithful/penitent (guys with rags tied around their heads. the palillos can be seen in progress in tallers around the city beforehand. linni and i even saw a group marching with a palillo on their heads loaded with sandbags to simulate the weight that they will have to bear once it is completely decorated. The pasos are accompanied by dozens to hundreds of nazarenos, people who pay a nominal some to the church to be involved for whatever reason they might have. These men women and children dress in robes, usually of solid color, with matching hood with eye holes. The hoods contain cones that stand over a meter high atop the head. Like a wizard. A grand wizard if you will. (It’s actually where the kkk got the idea for their outfits.) the processions vary in seriousness. some of the nazarenos walk in silence, barefoot for reasons of penitence. others wear sneakers and life up their hoods to smoke cigarettes and chat with friends in the crowd. There is a band with each pasos. They have been practicing for months. It sounds like something you would imagine hearing at a bullfight if you have never been to a bullfight. or like that trumpet at the beginning of that black eyed peas song. all very minor and melancholy. i mean it centers around the death of jesus so i suppose it makes sense that its not peppy. All the pasos pass through the cathedral in the center, do a 360 and then go home. Some come from pretty far and take routes that lead them around on an 8-hour tour of the city. There are pasos going on 24 hours a day. as you might imagine, this can make it rather difficult for anyone who actually wished to get around the city. the moorish design of the city already makes the roads inefficient and basically useless for anything but foot traffic. which is fine. its great actually. except when they close off a lot of the main through streets for the pasos. there are cops directing traffic and if you wait in a line you can eventually cross a street when the traffic of the paso is stopped for a bit. everything around the cathedral and avenida de la constitution is completely sectioned off and private for the sevilla elite. my bike was rendered completely useless anywhere near the center. we watched about a couple of hours of pasos on Sunday. i must say it was impressive. the palillos are really intricate, one of mary on a throne, another of jesus being abused by some life size roman soldiers, another with jesus just screaming and all kinds of plants all around him. the army of nazarenos is striking at teh very least, especially for someone from the us i think. the men were out in their suits and the girls in their dresses. everyone looked great. especially the girls. then tried to meet up with two friends who were only what is usually a 7-minute walk away. after nearly an hour of trying to find a route to where they were watching a paso, we got out of the madness and went home. we watched another hour on day two. i was glad we already had plans to get out of town on the morning of day three.

my students were baffled when i explained that easter was only one day in the states, and that in addition to the religious significance we commemorate it with the visit of a large basket-bearing rabbit who sneaks into our houses and yards in the middle of the night and leaves clandestine treats around for children to scramble and fight over in their easter bonnets when they get home from church. some of this candy is inevitably discovered during a long-put-off cleaning in august and is disgusting. i felt like david sedaris trying to explain this. but i guess the have the easter bunny in france and portugal so i guess franco kept him out along with progress.