Semana Santa (or ‘Holy Week’) is probably the best known religious festival not just in the Andalucía region but in Spain as a whole. In Seville, where the festival takes place, it is one of the city’s two major religious celebrations – the other being Feria de Abril (or ‘April Fair’).
Semana Santa is celebrated in the week that leads up to Good Friday on the Easter Weekend. Feria de Abril is celebrated two weeks after Semana Santa. The Semana Santa celebration attracts visitors not only from the greater Spain but from all corners of the globe.
The focal point of Semana Santa is the floats known as pasos carried in the different processions. The pasos are borne by carriers (costaleros) and each paso procession is followed by nazarenos (or penitents), often in their hundreds.
Even though the festival holds the most religious significance to Catholic faithful, non-adherents of Catholicism or other Christian denominations will find the workmanship of the pasos and the adherence to age old traditions fascinating. The pasos themselves are an artistic masterpiece with some of the life size figures used in the processions being more than 300 years old.
Each paso tells some part of the Easter events. The processions come from different parishes some within the city and others on its outermost limits. Over 50 brotherhoods (or cofradias) participate in the Semana Santa and each has two floats. One float is on the events around the crucifixion of Jesus Christ while the other shows the Virgin Mary grieving for the loss of her son.
The floats eventually congregate at the Seville Cathedral before they make their way back to their respective parishes. Floats coming from the outermost limits of the city can take up to 14 hours to arrive back at their home parish.
Each paso follows a predetermined route that is announced beforehand. However, the routes and times can change year after year. Crowds will line the streets in their thousands. The throngs of people leave many with only a distant glimpse of the float.
The opportunity to be a costalero (carrier) for the pasos is a role that is held in high regard. This is despite the fact that the costaleros are concealed by a veil that runs around the bottom of each paso and they remain unseen for virtually the entire event. There is intense competition for the positions as demand far outstrips the slots available.
To put the demand for costalero slots in context, Seville was pounded by massive rainfall in 2004 and 2005 at the time of Semana Santa. Due to this, many pasos had to be cancelled. There was public outpouring of grief by some of the men that had been selected to be costaleros in that year as they knew they might never get another opportunity in their lifetime.
While some pasos allow women to be costaleros, most restrict the role solely to men. This is mainly informed by the weight of the pasos some of which weigh more than 2 tons.
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