Holy Week in Seville

Holy Week in Seville is known as Semana Santa de Sevilla. It is one of the city’s two biggest annual festivals, the other being the Feria de Abril (April Fair), which follows two weeks later. It is celebrated in the week leading up to Easter (Holy Week among Christians), and features the procession of pasos, floats of lifelike wooden sculptures of individual scenes of sorrowfull Mysteries of the Rosary, or images of the grieving Virgin Mary.

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.

There are up to three pasos in each procession. The pasos dedicated to Jesus use figures of wood, wax, and wire to depict scenes from the Passion, and are usually covered in gold. The pasos dedicated to the Virgin Mary are usually covered in silver, and depict Mary weeping for her Son and sometimes holding Him in her arms.

The processions are organized by hermandades and cofradías, religious brotherhoods. Members precede the pasos dressed in penitential robes with capirotes, tall, pointed hoods with eye-holes. The capirotes were designed so the faithful could repent in anonymity, without being recognised as self-confessed sinners.

Nearly 70 cofradias (church brotherhoods) take part, each with their own image, as well as colourful misterios (tableaux of bible scenes), on elaborately-decorated pasos (floats). They may be accompanied by brass bands. The processions follow a designated route from their homes, churches and chapels to the Cathedral, usually via a central viewing area and back. The ones from the suburban barrios may take 14 hours to return to their home churches.

The processions continue from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday morning. The climax of the week is the night of Holy Thursday, when the processions set out to arrive at the Cathedral on the dawn of Good Friday, known as the madrugá.

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Wikipedia