Holy Week in Seville
We set out at nightfall through the streets. The crowds were collecting in the city centre under a hushed clamour that came from years of doing this - years that never spoiled it. The music came first: a din of mangled trumpets and dull drums to begin with, but, coming nearer, it fell into sombre, jolting melodies like a concertina split into seven instruments. Armagura, my friend Peña told me — song of bitterness. The parade was approaching. Above the dark heads I caught sight of the crucifix swaying, ten feet in the air. Peña lifted me onto his back, and I saw the forest of blue pointed hoods swarming in front of the cross. Hundreds and hundreds of them - the horrifying Nazarenes in their cowls - leading the cross towards the Cathedral. Their whole bodies were covered by capes tied at the waist with gold cord. White gloves shuffled for a grip on the cross, which lurched violently along its path. The papier-mâché Christ nodded a couple of feet clear of my face as it passed. Blood the colour of coffee had been trickled lavishly over the face and limbs.
The onlookers pressed towards the cross, but were oddly quiet, save for a couple of dolorous wails from old women. The crowds at other Holy Week parades had been raucous, especially on Palm Sunday - los Ramas - when a float displaying a statue of Jesus on a donkey had been carried, listing, through the plaza while palm leaves were beaten against the curved road.
I watched the Nazarenes until the crucifix and the last of the blue Klannish hoods faded into the prickling dusk. Peña suggested beer, so I followed him away from the square.
Cardenal Niño de Guevara brought hoods to Seville in the seventeenth century, Peña told me when we reached a café. All colours - black for the Javieres brotherhood, bright blue for the Hiniestas. The penitentes have no cones inside, so their hoods lie between their shoulder blades. The men who carry the floats are called costaleros, and should never be seen . In Huelva, a small town to the East, the costaleros have to crawl on the ground to get the floats under the gates of the Reina Victoria district. Heavy? Peña sniffed. Half a tonne. It is with this casual woe that Peña, like many Spaniards, treats his problems. But when it comes to the pains of the Christ or the Virgin, his emotions are profound.
Each of the fifty-seven brotherhoods, or parishes, of Seville has a Virgén, all equal in their beauty and craftsmanship. Some represent Mary in loss, some in hope, others in bitterness, but she is always displayed on a gilded float, heavy with tasseled brocade canopies, bristling with thousands of candles filling the air with the stench of wax.
During the evening processions, flowers, money, jewellery and prayers on crumpled paper are thrown onto the float as it sways past. In the old Vera-Cruz district I watched the parade with Peña. Their Virgén was robed in black velvet with gold overlay and wore an elaborate silver crown; the sixty-strong brotherhood had piled the float with white carnations. It seemed that every person at the ceremony genuinely loved the Virgén. There was no cynicism, no embarrassment. The most devout bowed down and cried out, the more sedate nodded to the float as it passed, or nudged hats. Even for me, a non-believer, Holy Week in Seville depicts true faith and a rare, pure respect for older, higher things.
For the cheapest flights to Seville visit FlightComparison.co.uk.