What does Holy Week mean to young people in Seville?

A smart­ly dressed old­er man tuts at my train­ers and points up at the Vir­gin Mary, shak­ing his head in frus­tra­tion. It’s Sem­ana San­ta (Holy Week) in Sevil­la and I’ve found myself acci­den­tal­ly sit­ting in a pre-record­ed mass in what appear to be the wrong clothes, my wan­der­lust hav­ing led me into a charm­ing but decep­tive­ly emp­ty chapel. Attend­ed by over half of Spain’s pop­u­la­tion each year, Sem­ana San­ta is one of the country’s most sig­nif­i­cant annu­al cel­e­bra­tions. Towns and cities restruc­ture them­selves to accom­mo­date the dai­ly pro­ces­sions of ornate floats (pasos) com­mem­o­rat­ing the Pas­sion, Death and Res­ur­rec­tion of Jesus Christ. Roads are closed, busi­ness­es and super­mar­kets shut down and annu­al leave is active­ly encour­aged. Home to the most grandiose pro­ces­sions in the coun­try, Sevilla’s piv­otal role in pop­u­lar­is­ing the Catholic fes­ti­val in the 16^th cen­tu­ry has inspired a fanat­i­cal devo­tion and pride amongst the local Sevillanos.

“I’ve nev­er missed a Sem­ana San­ta in my life, it’s my favourite week of the year,” says Igna­cio, 27, who has been par­tic­i­pat­ing in the pro­ces­sions as a pen­i­tent (Nazareno), the hood­ed fig­ures that accom­pa­ny the floats, since he was four-years-old. Near­ly a quar­ter of Sem­ana San­ta-goers are under the age of 30.

Dat­ing back to the 15^th cen­tu­ry, dur­ing the Span­ish Inqui­si­tion, the con­i­cal hoods (capirotes), and robes used to be enforced on those who had com­mit­ted reli­gious crimes as a form of pub­lic humil­i­a­tion. Today, the Nazarenos don these out­fits as a sym­bol of reli­gious penance dur­ing Sem­ana San­ta. ​“It’s passed down through the gen­er­a­tions. If your par­ents and grand­par­ents have been part of a Her­man­dad,” Igna­cio explains, refer­ring to the Catholic Broth­er­hoods (Her­man­dades or Cofradías), made up of devot­ed indi­vid­u­als who are in charge of organ­is­ing the pro­ces­sions, ​“then you would join the same one as well.” 

Despite being busy with full-time work and study, Igna­cio takes the whole week of Sem­ana San­ta off to watch the pro­ces­sions every day. ​“For me and my cir­cle, it’s a time to reflect and get clos­er to our reli­gion. I would love for it to be passed down to my chil­dren, too.”

To an out­sider, the uncom­fort­able resem­blance of the capirotes to the white hood­ed robes asso­ci­at­ed with the Ku Klux Klan is hard to ignore. Young sight-seers, such as Waleed (28) from Berlin, vis­it­ing Sem­ana San­ta for the first time expressed dis­com­fort in shar­ing such cul­tur­al­ly sym­bol­ic images on his social media for fear of being asso­ci­at­ed with neo-Nazism. ​“You can’t upload these images with­out con­text,” he says. How­ev­er, the his­to­ry of the capirotes long pre­dates the Ku Klux Klan, who formed in the ear­ly 1800s. While a rea­son as to why the KKK adopt­ed this uni­form has not been for­mal­ly iden­ti­fied, mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tions in the media have not helped dis­tin­guish the two, with the BBC wrong­ly using an image of a Nazareno of the San Gon­za­lo broth­er­hood to illus­trate an arti­cle on the KKK back in 2015.

“Peo­ple aren’t informed about it,” Igna­cio says. ​“For us, we wear it to get clos­er to our reli­gion. Under­neath these hoods we are repent­ing our sins, pray­ing, some of us fast­ing. I’d like peo­ple to come and see this for themselves.”

Tra­di­tion­al­ly, the role of pen­i­tent was exclu­sive­ly reserved for men. Women could only aspire to the role of ​‘manola’ – the mourn­ers who don black lace head­pieces (man­til­las) and five inch heels fol­low­ing behind the pro­ces­sions and griev­ing the pass­ing of Jesus Christ. There have even been instances of women covert­ly dress­ing up as men to par­tic­i­pate, with one woman fac­ing a sev­en-year ban from her Her­man­dad after being caught. It was only in 2011 that a decree estab­lish­ing full equal­i­ty of rights between mem­bers of the Her­man­dades was motioned by the Arch­bish­op Juan José Asen­jo, final­ly grant­i­ng women full par­tic­i­pa­tion in reli­gious penance. While accep­tance of women and chil­dren as pen­i­tents is wide­spread today, the role of float-bear­ers (costaleros) car­ry­ing the floats remains a pre­dom­i­nant­ly male domain, much to the cha­grin of some of the younger generation.

“There are many peo­ple that still believe women are only good for wear­ing the man­til­la dur­ing this week”, Esper­an­za, 34, says of the gen­dered sym­bol­ism that she believes per­sists today. Her broth­er is a Costalero and his sup­port and guid­ance encour­aged her to become one too. How­ev­er, Costalero groups in Sevil­la are over­sub­scribed with men and pre­vail­ing atti­tudes have not been recep­tive to change. For the past 17 years she has had to cel­e­brate Sem­ana San­ta in the near­by cities of Cor­do­ba or Huel­va, where female involve­ment is more nor­malised and she can take part as a Costalero – a role she views as being total­ly dis­tinct from that of a Nazareno, bear­ing greater emo­tion­al sig­nif­i­cance due to its rig­or­ous phys­i­cal demands.

Esper­an­za is attempt­ing to recruit 40 women to take part in next year’s pro­ces­sion in Sevil­la to bring out ​‘Maria Aux­il­i­ado­ra’ – a float fea­tur­ing the Vir­gin Mary that has been agreed by the church can be car­ried by a group of women. ​“You get to car­ry ​‘mama’ as I like to call her,” Esper­an­za explains, refer­ring to the Vir­gin Mary. ​“You’ve been blessed and cho­sen to do this work. You have to be a spe­cif­ic height and have a par­tic­u­lar strength, not every­one can do this.”

She wants to remind peo­ple who view women as sym­bol­i­cal­ly inca­pable of under­tak­ing the role of Costalera, of the his­tor­i­cal con­text of this tra­di­tion – a paid posi­tion only open to men in an era when women were dis­cour­aged from pur­su­ing work oppor­tu­ni­ties. ​“Clear­ly tra­di­tions can change and it’s time in Sevil­la for this to change as well.”

For Ibn Ita­ka, 34, an artist liv­ing in Sevil­la, the pro­ces­sions inspired tears, specif­i­cal­ly when he heard the bugles (cor­ne­tas) in per­son. ​“I could­n’t help but sur­ren­der to it.” Blind­sided by the pas­sion and uni­ty he wit­nessed, the week also rein­forced his views of Spain. ​“This Span­ish spir­it of when you jump into some­thing you jump into it whole-heart­ed­ly… Peo­ple here will fight a bull,” he said. He also reflect­ed on the lack of vis­i­bil­i­ty he felt as one of few Black peo­ple watch­ing the pro­ces­sions, which made him recall a Sevil­la Negra tour where he found out about ​‘La Her­man­dad de los Negri­tos’ – a Black broth­er­hood found­ed by a Span­ish arch­bish­op in 1393 to care for Black peo­ple liv­ing in Spain at the time. The broth­er­hood still exists today, albeit with­out any Black peo­ple. How­ev­er, Ita­ka remains hope­ful that things will change as Spain begins to reck­on with its past, stat­ing that ​“inclu­siv­i­ty is a default in younger generations.”

Many of the young Sevil­lanos I spoke to shared the idea of tra­di­tion being a way to con­nect with past loved ones. Although Seca, 22, stopped par­tic­i­pat­ing in the pro­ces­sions as a Nazareno when he was 16, due to his chang­ing views on Sem­ana San­ta, he still appre­ci­ates the week for its cul­tur­al and famil­ial val­ue, see­ing it a way of unit­ing the gen­er­a­tions and pay­ing homage to his ances­tors. ​“It’s emo­tion­al. My grand­ma cries a lot when she sees the pro­ces­sion because it reminds her of our grand­pa.”

Sim­i­lar­ly, Esperanza’s fam­i­ly meet at the same street cor­ner every Wednes­day of Sem­ana San­ta with­out fail – though this year felt dif­fer­ent, as one of her fam­i­ly mem­bers recent­ly passed away. Despite the sad­ness she says, ​“I would have to be bleed­ing in hos­pi­tal to miss a day of Sem­ana San­ta.“

Of course, not all the city’s young peo­ple are as enthu­si­as­tic. Eliz­a­beth, 28, bemoans how social­is­ing comes to a stand­still because of the impos­si­bil­i­ty of get­ting about. An out­sider to the tra­di­tion, her British par­ents nev­er encour­aged her to par­tic­i­pate, and while she tried to give it a go as a teenag­er, want­i­ng to fit in with her peers, she could nev­er quite con­nect with it. Now, she describes her group of friends as ​‘under­dogs’ due to their lack of inter­est in Sem­ana San­ta. ​“The peo­ple I know who attend are not the type that will go to church on a Sun­day. It’s only when Sem­ana San­ta comes around and it’s the moment to ask for for­give­ness,” she says. ​“Two weeks lat­er it’s Feria and they’re back to their usu­al par­ty­ing ways!”

Eliz­a­beth is wary of mak­ing these com­ments, how­ev­er, as hav­ing a neg­a­tive view of Sem­ana San­ta is not wide­ly accept­ed in Sevil­la. This year, the city’s may­or was forced toshut down his blog after his com­ments com­par­ing the Holy Week to the Tour de France caused a back­lash on Twit­ter.

Sus­pend­ing the city’s infra­struc­ture is an aspect of the cel­e­bra­tions that Seca agrees needs to change. ​“It shouldn’t be the case that a 10 minute jour­ney to get to work takes me an hour,” he says, point­ing to the issue of clas­sism and the increas­ing­ly large, hos­tile crowds for dam­ag­ing his recent expe­ri­ences of the week. ​“More and more made-up rules are being intro­duced, and you get dirty looks for just attempt­ing to cross the street. They think you’re try­ing to steal their spot!” Esper­an­za adds that social media is part­ly to blame for over­crowd­ing, with the advent of Sem­ana San­ta apps such as ​‘Gran Vega Pass’ and ​‘Cruz de Guía’ mak­ing it eas­i­er for the pub­lic to find out where and when the pro­ces­sions are tak­ing place in a way that was nev­er pos­si­ble before.

The fanati­cism that exists in Sevil­la is unique in Spain for its cul­tur­al con­ser­vatism. When Esper­an­za wears her costalero out­fit in Cor­do­ba or Grana­da, no one bats an eye­lid. In Sevil­la, she is no stranger to the side-eye. Claire also speaks to this: ​“Here in Seville, it’s com­mon to be asked ​‘who are your par­ents?’ Sur­names are a thing here.” When I tell Seca about my train­ers in church expe­ri­ence, he nods. ​“Being mocked for how you’re dressed dur­ing Sem­ana San­ta is a very com­mon expe­ri­ence,” he says, explain­ing that his grand­moth­er is still bliss­ful­ly unaware of the tat­toos on his arms. Minos, 26, a Lon­don-based pro­duc­er vis­it­ing for the week, was also shocked at see­ing how immac­u­late­ly dressed every­one was. ​“I’m Catholic and I’ve nev­er had this expe­ri­ence before,” she tells me. ​“In a way it made me feel more con­nect­ed to my reli­gion, but I did ques­tion all this opu­lence. To me Jesus’s mes­sage was much more sim­ple.”

This col­lec­tive out­burst of emo­tion and rev­er­ence is a rar­i­ty today, and to see this occur­ring across the gen­er­a­tions shows just how ingrained Sem­ana San­ta is in the Sevil­lanos cul­tur­al and reli­gious psy­che. For young Sevil­lanos, their com­mit­ment to pass­ing on but also reimag­in­ing some of the tra­di­tions feels hope­ful and though I strug­gled to con­nect to the soci­etal and reli­gious oblig­a­tions of the week, the spir­i­tu­al notion of remem­ber­ing our loved ones in such a pub­lic and uni­fy­ing way res­onat­ed. It gave me the oppor­tu­ni­ty to reflect and feel clos­er to my own late grand­par­ents – my grand­fa­ther, who would have walked as a Nazareno, and my grandmother’s pas­sion for her Vir­gin Mary.

​“For me it’s devo­tion­al,” Esper­an­za con­cludes. ​“Each year is unique – the flow­ers, the ​‘pasos’, your own emo­tion­al state. There are years where peo­ple come, and years when peo­ple go.”

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