Sevilla para la Semana Santa

April 2017 

Hola!

We decided that for Easter 2016 we would try experience an odd or strange festival tradition, and heard about Seville in Spain - famous for its processions of intimidating members of holy brotherhood through the streets followed by bands and sculptures of religious scenes. Welcome to Semana Santa 2017!

First a little bit about Semana Santa (or "Holy Week) itself. In the lead up to Easter, thousands of members of different Catholic brotherhoods march through the city from their "home" church, to Seville cathedral, and then back to their home church. Depending on how far away their church is, each march takes between four and 14 hours in total, kicking off from around 6pm each night. Each day involves different brotherhoods.

The outfits seem quite intimidating at first, obviously. The hoods are called capirotes, and apparently originate from the Spanish Inquisition, when people who weren't deemed Catholic were made to wear these pointed hooded hats and walk through the streets to be embarrassed and shamed. Afterwards, the idea of penitence for sins was retained along with the hats. Unfortunately the style was later adopted by the KKK leading to the processions looking quite imposing and sinister at first.

In Seville Cathedral

Also in the processions are the heavy wooden pasos, the religious statues often of the Virgin Mary or Jesus on the Cross. These are impressive statues, on top of bases making them about 5 metres high. Each is carried by groups of about 20 men at least, and each procession stops every few minutes to give them a rest. When they're ready to head off, a member of the procession claps a ceremonial knocker and the paso is hoisted up into the air and sets off again.

Every now and then, you would a group of sweaty men in singlets, with their eyes almost covered up, pushing through the crowd - these were the paso carriers, and they were probably off to get a drink.

Behind the paso is the band, playing epic or dramatic music with drums, horns and woodwind music during the day. Later at night, the processions march in silence, making for a very dramatic and moving scene.

Semana Santa was finished by Saturday night but thankfully there was much more to see and do.

Sunday morning

The old town area of Seville is also very pretty in its own right, with many impressive old buildings.

Seville Cathedral was impressive, particularly its tower called the Giralda. The tower was built in 1198 by the Muslim occupants of Spain for the muzzein call to prayer to be sounded from the top. After the reconquista of Spain by the Catholics, they kept the 100 metre high tower and built the cathedral around it a few hundred years later. Interestingly, the tower was modelled on the Koutoubia in Marrakesh that we saw last year.

Exterior, Seville Cathedral

We also liked the Plaza de Espana, built in 1929 to showcase all the aspects of Spain for the Ibero-American Exhibition.

Plaza de Espana

We had odd sighting now and then, like the man who walked his pig on a leash through the streets one night.

Another impressive attraction was the Real Alcazar, the former Royal Palace. Like the cathedral, this was also originally built by the Moorish Muslims and expanded by Catholics. It was also used in Game of Thrones for filming of scenes set in Dorne.

A visit to Seville isn't complete without tapas. It's renowned for its tapas so we also occupied ourselves by trying to have as much tapas as possible in as many bars as possible.

Each tapas dish is around 2 or 3 euros usually, and you could easily eat two or three dishes for dinner and call it a night. However, as mentioned above we were trying to eat as much possible so kept going. Drinks were also very cheap, so a couple of drinks and tapas frequently came to no more than 10 euros per bar. Waiters were always efficient (though not necessarily friendly) and you got your food and drink very quickly.

There was also huge variation in tapas dishes. Everywhere had jamon (cured ham) and bread, and montaditos (little buns filled with jamon or other meat and grilled or toasted. Apart from them there were a lot of other dishes, and every single bar served Cruzcampo beer and wine to accompany each dish.

Some of our highlights:

• Eslava bar - so good we went back twice! Great atmosphere, top quality modern tapas (compared with other more traditional tapas bars we went to). Beef ribs, cheese ice cream, and cuttlefish cigars
• Bodeguita Antonio Romero Reyes - montadito de la casa (jamon, fried egg and fried capsicum in toasted bun)
• LA Flor de Toranzo - montadito filled with roquefort cheese and picante sauce
• El Rinconcillo - cod in tomato and pepper sauce
• Las Terasa - solomillo al whiskey (pork loin in a whiskey sauce)
• Confiteria La Campana - toasted bread with olive oil and filled with tomato and serrano ham (my new favourite weekend breakfast at home)

Tapas from our two visits to Eslava

Gracias, Sevilla!