Semana Santa (Holy Week)

Spanish celebrations for Easter broadly divide up according to geography. On and near the Mediterranean - in the south and east - it is already spring and there is an air of euphoria and jubilation. Events in the north and centre of the country are generally more solemn and sombre.

If you can face the crowds, the Easter processions to see are those of Seville. Over the week from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday 57 brotherhoods carry 114 pasos (mobile religious sculptures) in over 50 processions - many of them in the middle of the night and some of them running concurrently. You need a copy of the fiesta programme to find out which procession goes where.

Another important area for Holy Week is the region of Murcia. In the capital, a stock of lifelike Baroque pasos by the 18th-century artist Francisco Salzillo are carried in procession on Good Friday. In neighbouring Lorca, Easter Week comes close to carnival. The lavish parade on Good Friday has a cast of characters akin to Cecil B de Mille's The Ten Commandments, with 4,000 people taking the parts of Nebuchadnezzar, the Queen of Sheba, Ptolemy, Solomon, Isis, Horus, Cleopatra and other Biblical and historical characters.

Easter Week has a very different character in the Castilla y León region. Processions here are generally more restrained and often silent. A large procession on Good Friday in Valladolid includes 28 painted wooden sculptures depicting the events of the Passion by Renaissance artists such as Juan de Juni.

In Lower Aragón - around Alcañiz, Calanda and Híjar - the soundtrack of Easter is the incessant drumming of Las Tamborradas, whose dour rhythms mourning Christ are said to symbolize the earthquake that struck at the moment of his death. Some towns in central Spain act out gestures of penitence through the mortification of the flesh. In Valverde de la Vera in Extremadura the empalaos (literally, "the impaled ones") visit the 14 stations of the cross at midnight on Holy Thursday with their outstretched arms lashed with ropes to heavy wooden plough beams. Even more severe are the sufferings of the picaos of San Vicente de la Sonsierra in La Rioja, a procession of barefoot penitents who flagellate themselves as they go.

The tone of Easter Week changes completely at midnight when the night of Easter Saturday turns into the morning of Easter Day. In some places, it is traditional to throw old crockery into the streets, tip water from a balcony, set off fireworks - anything to show that misery has changed into joy as Christ rises from the dead. Easter Sunday itself is a day of joy and celebration. The most common way of celebrating the Resurrection is the Encuentro or meeting, in which a paso or float bearing an image of Christ is brought alongside a paso carrying the Virgin.

Semana Santa ,with its swaying processions of barefoot hooded penitents and bedecked statues of Jesus and the Virgin, is one of the moments in the year when foreigners in Spain feel the otherness of this country most strongly. Professor Susan Verdi Webster (author of Art and Ritual in Golden Age Spain) has studied the penitent brotherhoods in Seville, the home of Spanish Holy Week. Susan, art history professor at the University of St Thomas, Minnesota, has spent years befriending members of the brotherhoods in Seville. "It is a vestige of the past which is very much alive. And it has that added intriguing element of being a closed society like the masons."

The tradition of cofradías (confraternities) or hermandades (brotherhoods) who bring to life the Passion of Jesus Christ has been alive for over five centuries in Spain and Latin America. In the 16th and 17th centuries almost every citizen belonged to one. Seville grew as an important home due to a trade monopoly which led to the rapid growth of the city and a huge influx of immigrants plus it was home to a permanent tribunal of the Inquisition. Susan adds another factor. "Seville was and is super traditional. It remains a very closed city with an inner world that is very difficult to move in. Nowadays there is also the very 20th century fact that it brings a huge amount of tourism to the city." 16th century Seville was a city teeming with foreigners: a contemporary compares the city to a giant chessboard with as many black as white players. Separate fraternities were formed by Moros - they and all other foreigners were excluded from the Spanish fraternities, so they in
turn excluded the Spanish.

The brotherhoods often replaced outlawed trades guilds and worked as an effective entrée into and protection against a tightly sealed community. Difficult to enter, the stated aim of the brotherhoods was to bring to life the passion of Christ through the sufferings of the penitents and the lifelike depiction of the statues. The early processions looked very similar to those of today: elaborately dressed statues with real clothing, hair and glass eyes and with penitents barefoot and wearing the conical hoods similar to those worn by the condemned during the inquisition. (Susan describes Semana Santa as a “kaleidoscopic, sensory overload”). They were, however, far bloodier affairs. A French noblewoman visiting Sevilla in 1679 wrote: "When they [the flagellants] encounter a pretty woman they lash themselves in a certain way that makes the blood splash upon her, for which the lady is eternally grateful."

"Participants speak of the time walking the streets during the procession as one of reflection on sins,” says Susan. “‘You can see everything but no-one can see you’ one told me. The face is covered not to protect the identity of the penitent but to make him anonymous. The penitents are taking on the sins of the whole crowd and are not being judged by it. There is a community service being done if you like and you don’t want the crowd being distracted thinking ‘Oh there’s my neighbour in chains.’”

Today, brotherhoods are made up of normal people from every walk of life who perform good works and give money to run their own charitable organisations. They are active every day of the year with catechism classes and other celebrations. Friends of the Sevilla confraternity Susan became closest to urged her to join. "I told them I didn’t believe but they said that didn’t matter. Strangely, I’ve found the members of the confraternities to be less fanatical than other church members in Spain.”

Semana Santa in Seville starts on April 15. In Madrid, things are more low-key although the confraternity of Jesús Nazareno el Pobre in La Latina is impressive. Just outside Madrid in Chinchón, a Passion Play is performed in the plaza.

Art and Ritual in Golden Age Spain is available from Princeton University Press http://pup.pupress.princeton.edu/

Moors and Christians Fiestas Throughout Spain

The medieval wars of the Reconquest, in which Christian forces fought to regain Moor-held territories, are commemorated annually in over 200 Moors and Christians fiestas throughout Spain.

The majority are in the province of Alicante, most famously in the industrial inland city of Alcoi where they are held from April 22-24. Other well-known Moors and Christians fiestas in the area are in the town of Ontinyent at the end of August and in Villena - where the castle is used as a backdrop - in early September.

Some celebrations have interesting twists. At Bocairent in February the Moorish captain ends by converting to Christianity and a giant stuffed figure representing Mohammed or the Moors in general is paraded and burnt.

The enemy are not always Moors, however. At Villajoyosa, on the Costa Blanca north of Alicante, an invasion of Berber pirates which took place in 1538 and which ended in the pirates being repulsed by the intervention of the town's patron saint St Martha is re-enacted. The high point is the disembarkation of the invaders on the beach at dawn.

Then there's the fiesta of Soller in Mallorca in May which celebrates a victory over Turkish pirates and another in Barlovento, which is held on the second Sunday of August every other year on the island of La Palma in the Canary Islands, re-enacting the crucial 1571 naval Battle of Lepanto in which the Ottomans were defeated.

More Moors and Christians festivities take place in the province of Granada. Granada itself celebrates the Día de la Toma on January 2 with a procession to mark the day in 1492 on
which the Catholic Monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, entered the city having defeated the last Moorish kingdom in Spain.

Various towns in the Alpujarras, notably Valor (Sept 14-15) commemorate the 16th-century revolt of the Moriscos - the Moors who stayed behind after the Reconquest and nominally converted to Christianity.

Elsewhere in Spain you can see further variations on the theme. At Valverde de Abajo in Cuenca two armies fight for possession of the child Jesus in January. The entrada, or victory parade,
in Jaca (Huesca), celebrates the liberation of the city from the Moors by Conde Aznar, aided by the women of the town who dressed up as men to pretend that there were more Christian soldiers than there actually were. And at Laza, in Ourense, there is a sword fight between three Moors and three Christians.

Although they have little or nothing to do with the bloodthirsty events of centuries ago, each of these endlessly-repeated battles and victories of the Christians over the Moors offers both a vivid reminder of Spain's fascinating and chequered history and yet another good reason to celebrate.

Spanish Mazes

Mazes have provided entertainment, acted as objects of contemplation and even taken on a religious symbolism over the centuries. Spain has a trio which are worth a visit

One of the best mazes to be found in Spain - and one of its most complex and beautiful - is located in Barcelona's Parc del Laberint d'Horta (c/Germans Desvalls near Passeig Vall d'Hebron). A bit off the beaten track, the remains of this 18th-century mansion and its labyrinth are but well worth a visit. The estate gardens were designed largely by the Marquis Desvalls and laid out in 1791, while the maze - a collaboration between Italian architect Domenico Bagutti and French gardener Delvalet - was added later.

Intended in part as a venue in which to hold soirées, the maze has a playful, romantic appeal. "It clearly reflects amorous games, with Eros the god of love at the centre," says the garden's press officer Montse Rivero. The maze includes a stream, waterfall and grotto as well as several neoclassical statues, creating a perfect place to spend a romantic afternoon.

Classical mythology also played an important part in the construction of the maze in the gardens of Seville's 17th-century Alcázar palace. This originally featured figures of Apollo and other Greek gods, but today little exists of the original design. A new labyrinth was built nearby in 1914 during the reign of Alfonso XIII. This has only one entrance and exit and takes around 10 minutes to explore from one end to the other. Some remnants of the older maze, including the original pond, hill and grotto, remain in the Jardín de Alfonso XIII, however.

The third in the trio, nestles in the woods just behind the Palacio Real de La Granja de San Ildefonso, 10 kilometres south of Segovia. Built in 1721, this example is one of the largest in Europe and was sympathetically reconstructed between 1984 and 1993 to restore it to as close to the original pattern as possible. Although little is known about the significance of this hedge art, the result is a beautiful and tranquil space.

Creating Matador Finery

Centuries of tradition, hours of sewing and at least a kilo of sequins go into making the matador's glittering 'suit of lights'. Two of Madrid's most famous tailers to the stars are Maestra Nati and
Justo Algaba.

Maestra Nati has set her own female stamp on the male-dominated world of corrida. She is the only woman sastre or tailor producing the brilliant suits worn by the big stars of the bullfight.
She learnt her trade from her mother and says: "When I started it was very, very hard. Bullfighting is a very 'machista world' and I had to fight ever step of the way to get accepted."

The business was founded in 1939, and her small workshop in c/Jardines in central Madrid is now an established stop-off for all the big names of the bullfighting circuit. The workshop itself is like a museum, with pictures of ring greats hanging alongside paintings by American torero John Fulton.

"This family has always been involved with the corrida," explains Enrique, her son and business director of the firm. "My mother married a torero, Enrique Vera, who became famous in films
like Tarde de Toros where he starred opposite Sara Montiel. I was also a matador for eight years, and afterwards I wanted to remain in the same world in some way or other. Now when I make a suit, I try to put all I remember of being a torero into it.

"At Maestra Nati we make everything except the bull!" he laughs, bringing out three suits, each more brilliant than the last. "An average suit of lights takes seven people working seven or eight
hours a day for around 25 days to make. There are different workers for each part, the sequins, the cord, the jacket, the trousers, the waistcoast, the stones, the gold embroidery, the making-up. It's very timeconsuming because after each stage the cloth must be re-ironed to bring it back into shape."

A suit is a heavyweight creation of satin encrusted with over a kilo of individually stitched-on sequins. It will last a matador 30 afternoons and is then sold to poorer toreros just starting
out. Prices range from 200,000ptas to 350,000ptas and he (or she) will need five or six to take them through a season.

"When it comes to design, some toreros and toreras have a fixed image of what they want," says Enrique. "Others leave it up to us. We have to be very careful. A suit must fit the
person perfectly. Very pale-skinned toreros wouldn't suit pale colours and dark-skinned ones look good with very strong colours like blue. Dominguin [father of famous Spanish singer Miguel
Bosé] was one of the most original designers."

If Maestra Nati is a gifted pioneer, Justo Algaba is a star. He has been making clothing for toreros for 25 years in his shop in c/La Paz in the heart of the city. He boasts that his is the
only tailor's in Spain to have a street-level retail area. Apart from dressing all the great toreros, he has designed clothes for people as diverse as LaToya Jackson, Andy Garcia and Placido
Domingo.

"In this world you have toreros at the top then picadors and further down, sastrerias. I wanted to be involved at some level," he explains. His strength lies in unusual design. "I can
be inspired by the Sistine Chapel or classical legend. We have just produced a cape with a Bacchus theme."

It is obvious that for both Maestra Nati and Justo Algaba, there is much more to the corrida than simply a man fighting a bull.

Glossary

Montera - the black Astrakhan hat with two ear shapes worn by the bullfighter.

Chaquetilla - the heavily adorned rigid bolero shaped to the back. Tassels called machos hang from the shoulders and the sleeves are cut beneath the armpits to allow freedom of movement.

Taleguilla - the trousers, also heavily adorned and very tight, finish just below the knee where they can be adjusted with more machos. The added sash is purely ornamental.


Medias - finespun pink tights which are usually worn with a white pair underneath.

Machos - the tassels used to adjust the trousers.

Capote de Paseo - beautifully adorned ornamental cape. A second pink and yellow cape is used to fight the bull.

Camisa - frilly white shirt.

Corbatin - fine black tie worn conventionally.

Coleta - the tiny pigtail, a fashion dating from the 17th century is kept by fewer and fewer toreros, most resorting to a false version these days.

Bullfighting Around Spain

Bullfighting has benefited enormously from tourist curiosity. The number of events, for example, held in the province of Málaga in 1999 was second only to Madrid: 40 bullfights were held last year in Benalmádena, 33 in Marbella and Puerto Banús, and 22 in Mijas, extraordinary figures when you compare their populations with those of traditional centres such as Seville, Bilbao and Valencia. The impresarios, knowing that their clients are undemanding, make easy money combining high prices, unexciting bulls and inexperienced bullfighters.

Seville has a highly discerning audience and has produced an extraordinarly high number of great bullfighters including José Gómez 'Joselito' and Juan Belmonte. The bullring of Sevilla is spectacular - small, but well proportioned and colourful. Audiences have the reputation of being over-tolerant of local talent and cold towards any outsiders.

Bilbao organizes a major festival of around seven bullfights on consecutive days during the third week of August, the so-called Semana Grande. Here, the audience prides itself on being interested more in the bull than in the bullfighter. The weights, physical appearance and horn formations of bulls in Bilbao are more spectacular than those in Seville. Though Bilbao may hold a handful of bullfights each year, the major critics all attend the Semana Grande.

A minor bullfighting renaissance is underway in Barcelona after a decline in the seventies and eighties saw one of the city's two bullrings fall into complete disrepair. The other ring - La Monumental - slipped into offering modest programmes for tourists. However, careful management of the ring by the Balañá family in recent years has paid dividends and Barcelona is beginning once again to show bullfights of real quality. Star performers like Francisco Rivera Ordóñez, José Tomás and El Juli have turned in spectacular performances here.

There are also 'first category' bullrings in Valencia, Zaragoza and San Sebastián where bulls must all be above the same minimum weight as in Madrid, Seville and Barcelona (460kgs). Valencia holds two major fairs each year, one of about seven bullfights around the Day of St José (March 19) and during the Fallas, and another in late July, around the day of Santiago (July 25).

Although Zaragoza's principal fair is in October around the day of the Virgin of the Pilar, the new management team in Zaragoza led by Frenchman Simón Casas has begun to design major events outside fair-time. After 28 years of inactivity, San Sebastián recently opened a new bullring in the suburbs.

Other cities such as Córdoba, Jaén, Almería, Albacete, Valladolid, Alicante, Castellón and Logroño are all important centres of bullfighting, as are smaller towns such as Jerez de la Frontera, Puerto de Santa María and Ronda. They tend to stage bullfights to coincide with local festivals. Finally, there is Pamplona. The week of bullfights held in early July each year to celebrate the patron saint of Pamplona, San Fermín, needs no introduction. Hemingway's novel The Sun Also Rises put Pamplona and the local tradition of letting the bulls run through the city streets on the morning of each bullfight on the world map.

As in Bilbao, the locals claim to admire the bulls more than the bullfighters but for other aficionados the drinking and revelry inside the arena are simply too much. Several top stars, Joselito included, have publicly vowed never to perform again during San Fermin.

Hitting the pilgrim trail in Andalusia

Having conquered the historic route once trodden by medieval pilgrims across northern Spain to Santiago de Compostela, Jonathan headed south to explore Andalusia's Vía de la Plata.

It was not our first pilgrimage in Spain. Four years previously, three of us had walked the historic route once trodden by medieval pilgrims across northern Spain to Santiago de Compostela. This time, however, we intended to explore the Vía de la Plata or Road of Silver which wends its way through Andalusia.

The silver in its title reflects the tonnes of precious metals which flooded into the region from the New World. It was the bounty of the returning conquistadores who landed in Cádiz and deposited their new-found wealth in their home villages before continuing northwards to the shrine of St James in the cathedral of Santiago de Compostella.

After collecting our pilgrims "passports" from the cathedral rectory in Seville, we left the winding streets and heavily fruit laden orange trees of the charming southern town behind us. Our walk started in earnest at Buillena, just outside the city. We soon found ourselves on a cart track which wound gently uphill and passed the first of many deserted castles.


The countryside was a pastel patchwork of wild flowers. Carpeting the ground between groves of olive trees and holm oaks were wild lavender, Jerusalem sage and fragrant rosemary, while above our heads the etiolated silhouettes of black and white storks rode the thermals high above us in relentless circles.

Our first stop was Castel Blanco, no longer a castle as such, but a check-in point where our passports were officially stamped as proof of travel. Here we met up with our motorised support team -of long-suffering partners.

From there we progressed on towards Almadén and the "wasp inside the shorts" incident, which resulted in much flapping of clothing and unpilgrimlike language. Undeterred, we continued on to the El Real de la Plata which runs through the cork woods of Extremadura.

Until then the trail had been clearly marked every few hundred metres or so by yellow arrows daubed on walls, stones or trees along the side of the path. As we traversed a large private housing estate these arrows disappeared, however. After much furrowing of brows, consultation of maps and unsuccessful aligning of compasses, we were finally forced to consult our GPS gismo. This immediately locked onto several satellites and gave a mind-bogglingly detailed map reference.

The trouble, it seemed, was that harvesting the bark off the cork trees had also resulted in the removal of several arrows, but we were soon back on a track and wending our way through the wood. When we finally spotted the first fresh arrow in several kilometres, we fell upon it with the relish of botanists discovering a rare plant.

The following morning the weather was cloudless but cool as we emerged from a holm-oak forest inhabited by snuffling black pigs to be greeted by another ruined castle. This time the Castillo de Torres, spectacularly silhouetted in a field of poppies on the other side of a stream. Beneath our feet the track continued, dazzlingly white in the sunshine, towards the Monastery.

A day later we were in Fuente de Cantos and the centre of a seriously chilly cold snap. For days the weathermen had been forecasting a fall of late snow. But we had remained singularly unconvinced. With our breath crystallising in the air in front of us, fleeces and anoraks were hastily donned to ward off the bitter north wind as we set off once more to Zafra.

There we picked up a new team-member - a dachshund from the railway sidings in to town, who attached himself to our party and despite efforts to dislodge him, even trailed us round the local supermarket. Eventually we shook him off, but Zafra had so much to offer that we decided to avail ourselves of the free tour offered by the Tourist Office. Under a cold, mizzling rain we traipsed around plazas, chapels, a fortress and the family chapel of the Dukes of Feria, followed by much hot coffee to combat the chill.

Leaving Zafra sleeping in Mayday sunshine we entered the Barros region a land of vines, olive groves and almond or peach trees. An evening side trip took us to Villa Alba, then Feria, where we watched a cross being decorated in preparation for a local fiesta before heading up to catch a stunning sunset from a ruined castle perched high above the village.

From Villafranca we followed a stretch of Roman road, which cut, straight as a die, through the geometrically planted vines to the town of Almendralejo. We'd been under the misapprehension that this was some sort of Spanish Shangri La, but sadly this was not the case. The heavily industrialized center of wines and olive oil did provide us with our first paella of the journey, however, and that was to be the group's the best memory of our rain-drenched visit.

Our next destination, Mérida, could not have been more different. It is hard to believe that the Romans have been so long gone. The remains of their low, multi-spanned bridge over the river and predictably impressive amphitheater and forum seem to have been abandoned by them only yesterday. Still resident, as they probably were a 1,000 years ago, are the storks which nest precariously on the remaining pillars of the ancient aqueduct.

Outside Caceres the weather improved dramatically and we approached the town in warm sunshine. On the outskirts, our way was blocked by 450 bleating sheep. I didn't count them, that information was provided by their friendly shepherd whose face was as gnarled as the hand I shook on leaving.

From beautiful Cáceres, we crossed a high plain in evaporating morning mist, as vultures, bee-eaters and storks circled above. In a field of corn beside the track a great bustard rose majestically like a startled swan.

That evening we made a memorable side trip to Trujillo - birthplace of of the conquistador Pizarro, whose equestrian statue towers over the main square, and home to silver screen hero Maximus in the Ridley Scott epic Gladiator.

Our path took us next to Cañaveral, then on past a series of large reservoirs to Galisteo. On the final 28-kilometre stretch we could see snow-capped mountains in the distance to the north. Near midday as we followed a fence, we noticed cows on the other side, plus a large, black bull which stood square across our path. The bull roared and pawed the ground with a forefoot - an attitude worryingly reminiscent of those seen in bullfights - before lowering his head and practising a few matador-tossing movements with his head. We beat a tactical retreat, one of our group vainly clutching two walking sticks a la bandillero, and battle was avoided by a wide flanking movement.

At Galisteo our 275-kilometre pilgrimage came to an end for the time being, with the remaining 600 kilometres to Santiago to be finished at later date...