Semana Santa, or Holy Week, is Spain's week long Easter celebration where they parade floats, or tronos, around town. These things are all very old and very heavy. Here's an example of one now!
Each one is covered in flowers and supported by a group of men from each specific trono's church. They're followed around by members of the military and a band, and every so often they stop and some woman wails a song in a thick Spanish accent. The one above is from the city of Málaga, whose adventures I'll recount next, but here's one from Córdoba where I live:
Notice that there are a lot fewer guys holding up the trono. In the previous image you can see there are guys in front, under, and behind the thing, but in Córdoba they only have a group of guys under it. You could tell that it was a lot more difficult to carry the Córdoba ones around with such fewer guys. At one point later in the evening the trono stopped in front of me, and a few guys peaked their heads out from underneath and were, very much out of breath, asking for water. What's even more impressive, is that in Córdoba, even with fewer guys, after every time they take a break, they set themselves up, and before they start walking again they all jump, lifting the trono off the ground and into the air!
But don't worry, Jesus doesn't get all the fun! Mary's also involved in this whole thing, too. Hers was actually one of my favorites:
And here's another, one of Jesus making it's way past the Mezquita:
And of course, we can't forget the outfits that are very reminiscint of a violently racist group in our very own country. Thankfully in Spain it's all very religious and there's no racism attached, obviously, since they did choose these costumes first.
Also in Córdoba, the kids have this tradition of taking a small ball of aluminum foil, sticking it on a stick, and collecting wax from all the people escorting the trono around town, as you can see in this next picture. For a split second I thought about doing this too, but since all the kids participating were under the age of 10, I decided it might seem a little funny. Not to mention then I'd just have a big ball of wax, and how would I explain that to customs? In any case, I snapped a quick pic of two kids collecting some wax. One girl I saw later in the evening had one the size of a grapefruit. Talk about determination!
And, finally, one last trono passing through the Patio de Naranjas right in front of the Mezquita. It's this lovely area right in front of the mosque-cathedral that's filled with orange trees, so since it was early April while all this was going down, all the orange blossoms were in bloom and it smelled absolutely lovely.
So that's about it for Semana Santa. It was a nice week off from school, and even got to travel to Málaga, which I'll talk about in the next entry!
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