Holy Week In Spain

"Holy Week In Spain is the annual tribute of the Passion of Christ celebrated by Catholic religious brotherhoods and fraternities that perform penance processions on the streets of almost every Spanish city and town during the last week of Lent, the week immediately before Easter."

We have been seeing and participating in a few of the celebrations this Semana Santa.  Last Night our town had their big procession.  It was full of the "Nazareno" with their distinctive hoods and cloaks of the Spanish Holy Week (around way before the KKK)

We had lots of friends participate and it was fun to go and support them.  The procession had 2 main "paso", sort of like a float but not.   One of them was the crucifixion and the last one was for the Virgin Mary.  They were both beautiful and huge.  The crazy thing about them is that they are not on wheels but are carried for the entire time.  They practice before hand and have teams and a rotation to carry them so it is being lifted and carried and then set down multiple times during the night.

Also all the Nazareno have their own huge candle as well as all the lights on the floats are all real candles.  I have a hard time not looking at them as fire hazards but one of the childhood traditions is to go and collect the candle wax that people are dumping off of their large candle and make a ball out of it.  Jacob wanted to do it so but bad but we were not going to watch long enough for him to make any sort of ball so it didn't happen.

  Our friends Monolo, Mariela, and their son Carlos (in the outfit)

 Our Friend and Neighbor Juani dressed as the "Mantilla" the official mourners of the procession.

The feet of the men under the Paso of float