Rerouting Easter

If you're American, I know that your attention went directly to the picture on the right, completely disregarding the title above and this very sentence.  You probably had a similar reaction to my own when I saw my first procession of Semana Santa (Holy Week).  I did a double-take and was a little creeped out by the hundreds of nazarenos parading down the street.

But the outfits photographed are traditional Catholic gowns worn during the week before Easter and are not representative of the KKK.  (Actually the KKK adopted these robes for its outfit, which is ironic because it is an anti-Catholic group.)  Originally these cloaks were worn during medieval used by penitents to conceal personal identity.

Once I got over the initial shock of seeing these robes and realized it stemmed from long-established traditions, I joined the thousands of Spaniards eagerly watching along the streets.  Preceding and following these groups of robed men are marching bands trumpeters and drummers, women dressed in black mantillas, and floats of Biblical Easter scenes.  It was very entertaining...for about a half hour.

Photos courtesy of Ely Finnie

I liked listening to the music.  I liked observing the floats and figuring out the corresponding Biblical scene.  I even liked receiving a giant handful of candy (if you look at the first nazareno in the picture above you can see that his robe is stuffed with candy that is distributed to children...and blonde foreigners, apparently).  But after a while I just wanted to move on to my favorite restaurant or favorite café.  The only problem was I couldn't.  At least not without difficulty. 

The entire Semana Santa is a national holiday, so people are off work and line up on the streets to watch 2-3 processions a day, and each procession can last up to 2-3 hours.   And they go throughout the city--down main streets, down side streets, through large plazas, through small plazas.  Basically they follow all of the routes I usually walk.  

My two good friends John and Joel were visiting my from the States we were walking around a lot during these festivities.  No matter what city we were in--Murcia, Alicante, or Granada--we encountered a procession.  Eventually we learned to detect the warning signs of a procession from miles away--the repetitive beating of the drums, the screeching of the trumpets, the glow of the candles, and the aroma of the burning incense.  We would attempt to reroute ourselves, but somehow we would end up just crossing the endless parades, which is considered to be rude.  But if we hadn't crossed them at least a few times we would still be trapped in the corners of Alicante.

So this is what Easter has been like in Spain.  In the end we made it to all our destinations through several detours, we just had to face the crowds and cloaks to get there.