Hoods On, It's Holy Week...

Spring has definitely arrived, we’ve been basking in some glorious sunshine (sorry Britain!), and everyone’s out on the streets (yet again.) There was Basque country dancing in the cathedral square last night, and a fantastic jazz band on our street – but the huge outdoor event of this week is the Semana Santa (Holy Week) processions. Yes, Easter (‘Pascual’) is coming – and Passover too.

Not much sign of Passover here, where, unlike almost every other Spanish city, there has never been a Jewish community, even before the expulsion in 1492: so we’ll be eating our hard-boiled eggs and salt water on our own on Seder Night (Monday).

But Easter is a BIG deal here. As in the rest of Spain, Holy Week is marked in Bilbao by 8 days of extraordinary religious processions, from Palm Sunday (Domingo de Ramos) to Easter Sunday (Domingo de Resurreccion), commemorating the events of the Passion. From Maundy Thursday to Easter Monday, the whole country shuts down.

Today we went to see the Palm Sunday procession at San Vicente in town. (Each procession leaves and returns a couple of hours later to one of the city’s churches, a different church for each procession.)

The procession was slow, sombre and impressive – and fantastically colourful, especially since most of the nazarenos were carrying long palm leaves.

The processions are organised by ‘cofradias’ – fraternities (mostly connected with parish churches). Each cofradia organises a band of ‘nazarenos’ – penitents – to join the procession. Each has its own particular costume, but all of them wear the penitential robes of various colours – with hoods and pointed hats (‘capirotes’) – which have been used since medieval times (a style unfortunately later also adopted by the Klu Klux Klan in the States). The hoods are/were apparently used to hide the identity of the penitents who are/were ashamed of their sins, including their responsibility for the death of Christ.

At some point in the procession, ‘pasos’ (religious sculptures – many several hundred years old) are carried on heavy floats by some of the nazarenos called ‘costaleros’.

Each cofradia’s group of nazarenos also includes musicians who play special traditional tunes with wailing trumpets and ceremonial drums of various shapes and sizes.  (Once again, we marvelled not only at the extraordinary community effort all this involved, with hundreds of people participating, but also at the ability of the Basques to produce so many talented drummers and brass players in their communities).

The whole thing is extraordinarily medieval – it’s been going on in Bilbao since 1553, and much earlier in other parts of Spain. Although the Basque Country is pretty Catholic, it’s hard to say how much of it is a sign of religious devoutness, though. The processions seem to be done by people of all generations, including many children (who by the way don’t wear the penitential hoods); but we have noticed that church-going seems to be mainly done by old people. In the end, much of it is perhaps more about the continuance of a powerful dramatic community tradition involving lots of dressing up and music….

You can get a sense of what the processions are like here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWuNg-oybrA

Lots more processions to come, so watch this space….