Holy Week in Spain

Departure from Our Father Jesus of the Penas of San Roque, Seville.

Return to the Cathedral of Christ of the Viga, Jerez de la Frontera.

Image of the Blessed Christ of La Laguna leaving the cathedral during the Magna Procession of Good Friday (Tenerife).

Holy Week in Spain is celebrated with processions organized by brotherhoods and brotherhoods taking to the streets. The manifestations of faith are influenced by tradition, which in turn is linked to the customs of each town.

Holy Week coincides with the last week of Lent on the Catholic calendar. It is located between Palm Sunday and Resurrection Sunday. Sometimes it is called Semana Mayor. Processions until Holy Saturday are called the penance station. The processions that take place on Easter Sunday are not of penance, but of glory. The procession has some litters, called pasos —in some localities called "thrones"-, on which sculptures with the evangelical characters related to the arrest, death and resurrection of Christ procession. The brothers of the brotherhoods that participate in the procession usually do so dressed in tunics and conical hats lined with a cloth that serves as a mask. These brothers are often known as Nazarenes or penitents.

Some celebrations in specific enclaves have received recognition of International or National Tourist Interest. Holy Week in Spain was declared a Representative Manifestation of the Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2017. There is also a file to be declared a representative manifestation of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity (PCI).

Catholic liturgical calendar

Holy Week is the week after the fifth week of Lent. Holy Week begins Easter, which lasts seven weeks. The last weekend of Lent receives attention from some Spanish brotherhoods that celebrate some processions because they are considered Dolores Friday, Passion Saturday and Palm Sunday. The one known as Palm Sunday is recognized by the Church as the beginning of Easter and receives the official name of Passion Sunday. The name "Palm Sunday" It is given to him because in many Spanish cities a procession is celebrated on that day with the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey received with praise made with branches (olive and palm trees) by the Jerusalemites and the apostles.

Passion Sunday (or Palm Sunday) is followed by a Monday, a Tuesday and a Wednesday without specific mention in the liturgical calendar but which within the Hispanic festivity are called Holy Monday, Holy Tuesday and Holy Wednesday. Holy Thursday and Good Friday do receive this mention in the liturgical calendar since the last supper, the arrest and the crucifixion of Jesus are located on those days. Holy Saturday receives the Catholic name of Pascual Vigil and Resurrection Sunday receives the name of Easter Sunday.

History

Late Middle Ages and Renaissance

Within the late medieval brotherhood period we can distinguish three periods: from 1050 to 1150, the beginnings; from 1150 to 1350, the heyday; from 1350 to 1500, when there was a change in mentality. Although today the term "cofradía" and "brotherhood", in all late-medieval documents they are called brotherhoods. At this stage, members of the same guild or estate gathered for charitable purposes or to worship a patron saint.

The religiosity of the western European of the Middle Ages was communal and, although there was sin in society, religion permeated all social life. Religiousness was also festive and was the reason for some celebrations. In addition, the piety of that man was full of saints and particular devotions.

The brotherhoods can be pious, builders (supporting the construction of religious buildings, hospitals, bridges, etc.), benefactors (to help the homeless, carry out burials, distribute money or food, etc.), of people belonging to a social group (trade unions, clergy, etc.), of people belonging to the same ethnic group or region and religious-political (military, mercedes captives, charity, etc.). Within the pious brotherhoods are the religious ones (of Christ, of Mary, or of saints), the parish ones, those of personal salvation or that of the deceased, and those of penance.

The penance brotherhoods, which are the ones that procession during Holy Week, were founded from the XVI century. For the priest Federico Gutiérrez, an expert on Easter themes, these are organized in the XVI century as a result of Luther's challenge to the headquarters of Rome from 1517, of the Council of Trent of 1545 and of the first autos de fe. In these circumstances, the people felt the need to go out into the streets to demonstrate their Catholicism in a public cult. The historian José Sánchez Herrero says that the origin of the penance brotherhoods has its origin in nine factors:

• The great slaughter from 1347 to 1350. The black plague causes a decline in the population from 40 to 60 by the way and the epidemics are repeated cyclically every seven or fifteen years until 1400. Castile will recover demographically throughout the centuryXV but the region of Catalonia will not do so much later.
• This high mortanity causes a change of concept and mentality around death. Christian devotion is no longer joyful, but it is painful. This is why we emphasize the Passion and Death of Jesus and not the Resurrection.
• From the centuryXIV flogging groups became more nurtured in Europe. Even though they existed before the epidemics of plague became more numerous.
• A theatre will develop around death. Between 1430 and 1440 the "danzas de la muerte" arrived in Castile and Leon, which are liturgical and paralyzed representations of Passion or Descent.
• The role of Saint Vincent Ferrer. Although the flogging cofraterns that produced intonating penitence chants and disciplining in public existed in Europe since before the centuryXIII. Some groups were condemned by Pope Clement VI and his leaders, such as Gerardo Segareli in 1300 and Dolcino de Novara in 1307, were executed. Others remained within the Church. There was another group of floggers near San Antonio de Padua, who died in 1231. There was another group in Perugia promoted by the Augustinian eremite fray Rainiero Fasani in 1260. At the end of the centuryXIV and the beginning of the XV the Dominicans promoted to discipliners such as Blessed Ambriosius of Siena, Blessed John Dominici and Venturino of Bergamo.

Since 1399 St.Vincent Ferrer travels the paths of Spain by creating companies of discipline and fosters the practice of flogging by setting holy Sunday, St Francis of Assisi and St. They produced at night, hooded and dressed in a particular robe. These groups went to mass, confessed, communicated on Sundays and fasted certain days. Those who flogged for money or food were criticized and were said to be false discipliners. Vicente Ferrer wrote a book of rules for the discipliners entitled Ordinacions y establisments para la cofradia de Preciosa Sanch de J.C. anomenada dels Disciplinants. The manuscript has never been found, nor has the printed edition published in Barcelona in 1547.

Although some disciplinary and flogging fellowships have been mentioned, the truth is that after the centuryXVI they were in decline and the bishops began reproving them already in the centuryXVII. Finally, Carlos III forbade them through a Royal Council of February 20, 1777, alleging that they were neither building nor truly devotional.

• The role of the Franciscans. According to historian G. Rubio:

The foundation of the fellowships of Passion comes from substantial devotion in Franciscan life to these mysteries and the possession and keeping of the Holy Places in the Holy Land. When the Franciscans who had been to the Holy Land returned to their respective provinces of origin, many commemorative practices of the Passion, the Passion Costumes, the Cross Way

G. Blonde. The Franciscan Custody of Seville1953.

Throughout Spain there were fellowships around supposedly true relics of the cross of Jesus. These relics may have been brought from the Holy Land by the Franciscans. This cult of the true cross (the Vera Cruz) caused the creation of fellowships with this title. The first documentation of a confraternity of the Vera Cruz dates from 1494 in the church of San Juan de Puerta Nueva de Zamora. In 1506 the Franciscan Fray Diego de Bobadilla created the Cofradía de la Vera Cruz de Salamanca. In 1515 another was created in a Franciscan convent of Alcañices. In Seville, a confraternity of the Vera Cruz will also be created on the undetermined date of the hand of a confraternity of the Blood created around 1448 in a chapel of the Casa Grande de San Francisco.

In 1420 Blessed Alvaro of Cordoba returned from the Holy Land and there was in Sierra Morena a sunny and steep place topographically similar to Jerusalem. Later, he built chapels on sites of that landscape and baptized them as each of the Holy Places. This was the first crossroads in Europe. A century later, the noble Sevillian Fadrique Enríquez de Ribera made a trip to Jerusalem from 1518 to 1520 and, on his return to Seville, he organized a cross road from his palace to a temple or humiliator. From the palace to the cross there was the same distance as from the house of Pontius Pilate to the Golgotha of Jerusalem, so the Hispalian palace became known as the House of Pilates.

• The action of the genoves. In Spain there was a large population of Genoese origin. In the centuryXVI the genoves founded the cofradía de la Piedad in Valladolid, while the court of Carlos I was in that city. On 1579 there are recorded groups of disciplinary genoves who produced Holy Thursday in Seville, although without formation.
• The action of the Spanish. In Valladolid, a brotherhood of discipliners was founded in 1531 under the advocation of the Passion and that same year the Brotherhood of the Martyrs and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ was founded in Seville, which in 1577 became the Brotherhood of the Holy Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ to emulate that of Valladolid.
• Get the pictures out of the street. The processions in the lower Middle Ages were made with relics or simply with a crucifix. La Cofradía de la Vera Cruz must have proceeded with a crucifix in Seville from 1468. There is also evidence that a crucifix of the convent of St. Augustine of Seville was brought out in procession that had been there since 1314. The removal of religious sculptures in procession is something that occurs from the centuryXVI.

Contemporary Age

The Virgin of Clement, Vivero.

Pass of Jesus Nazarene, Ferrol.

The life of the brotherhood experienced ups and downs during the 17th and 18th centuries.

The Contemporary Age (from the French Revolution onwards) in Spain, as in other European countries, has been marked by the religious question or conflict, often violent, between clericalism and anti-clericalism, which has influenced the successive regime changes produced in Spain, to the relations between Church and State and, more locally, to life in the penance brotherhoods.

The French invasion (1808-1814) brought with it the looting or destruction of the heritage of temples and monasteries and even the demolition of many of them. The confiscations, which sought to put an end to institutions that did not generate any economic benefit, caused the secularization of many monasteries and the dispersion or loss of the sacred art they contained.

The Glorious Revolution of 1868, which had a profoundly secular character and desecrated many temples, citing an excess of churches and parishes.

Finally, we can mention the Second Republic (1931-1936), whose Constitution established a secular state, an issue rejected outright by the right and the Catholic Church. During the Second Republic and in the republican zone of the Civil War (1936-1939) that followed, left-wing anticlerical groups razed and assaulted hundreds of temples, thus destroying a good part of the brotherhood heritage.

Between the end of the 19th century and the first half of the XX the cities where there were a good number of Catholic brotherhoods began to create local federations linked to the ecclesiastical hierarchy with the names of Federation, General Council or Association of Brotherhoods and Brotherhoods. The periods of greatest formation of new brotherhoods or recovery of past brotherhoods in the XX century were the 20s and, after the Republican period, throughout the Franco regime. Dozens of new penance brotherhoods were also founded during the 1980s and 1990s.

Since the 1960s, Spain began to stand out as an international tourist destination. Since 1980, the State has been considering Holy Week in different places as National or International Tourist Interest. In 1980, the first weeks to receive the declaration of Festival of International Tourist Interest were Seville, Valladolid, Zamora, Málaga and Cuenca.

Celebrations of International and National Tourist Interest

International Tourist Interest

This recognition has been granted by the Secretary of State for Tourism of the Spanish government since 1980. Holy Week in Zamora is the first and only ^{[citation required]} in being declared an Asset of Cultural Interest In addition, today, it is the only one found on the list of candidates for Intangible Heritage of Humanity.^{[citation required]}

International Tourist Interest Celebrations

Celebration	Municipality	Province	Autonomous Community	Year of concession
Holy Week in Cuenca	Cuenca	Cuenca	Castilla-La ManchaCastilla-La Mancha	1980
Holy Week in Malaga	Malaga	Malaga	AndalusiaAndalusia	1980
Semana Santa in Seville	Sevilla	Sevilla	AndalusiaAndalusia	1980
Easter in Valladolid	Valladolid	Valladolid	Castilla y LeónCastilla y León	1980
Easter week in Zamora	Zamora	Zamora	Castilla y LeónCastilla y León	1986
Holy Week in León	León	León	Castilla y LeónCastilla y León	2002
Holy Week in Salamanca	Salamanca	Salamanca	Castilla y LeónCastilla y León	2003
Holy Week in Cartagena	Cartagena	Murcia	Region of MurciaRegion of Murcia	2005
Holy Week in Hellín	Hellín	Albacete	Castilla-La ManchaCastilla-La Mancha	2007
Holy Week in Lorca	Lorca	Murcia	Region of MurciaRegion of Murcia	2007
Easter in Medina de Rioseco	Medina de Rioseco	Valladolid	Castilla y LeónCastilla y León	2009
Holy Week in Granada	Grenada	Grenada	AndalusiaAndalusia	2009
Holy Week in Orihuela	Orihuela	Alicante	Valencian CommunityValencian Community	2010
Holy Week in Crevillente	Crevillente	Alicante	Valencian CommunityValencian Community	2011
Easter week in Murcia	Murcia	Murcia	Region of MurciaRegion of Murcia	2011
Holy Week in Cáceres	Cáceres	Cáceres	ExtremaduraExtremadura	2011
Holy Week in Medina del Campo	Medina del Campo	Valladolid	Castilla y LeónCastilla y León	2012
Holy Week in Palencia	Palencia	Palencia	Castilla y LeónCastilla y León	2012
Holy Week in Vivero	Vivero	Lugo	GaliciaGalicia	2013
Holy Week in Ferrol	Ferrol	The Coruña	GaliciaGalicia	2014
Holy Week in Lower Aragon	Albalate del Arzobispo, Alcañiz, Alcorisa, Andorra, Calanda, Hijar, La Puebla de Hijar, Samper de Calanda and Urrea de Gaén	Teruel	AragonAragon	2014
Easter week in Zaragoza	Zaragoza	Zaragoza	AragonAragon	2014
Holy Week in Ávila	Avila	Avila	Castilla y LeónCastilla y León	2014
Holy Week in Toledo	Toledo	Toledo	Castilla-La ManchaCastilla-La Mancha	2014
Semana Santa in Jerez de la Frontera	Jerez de la Frontera	Cadiz	AndalusiaAndalusia	2014
Holy Week in Merida	Merida	Badajoz	ExtremaduraExtremadura	2018
Holy Week in Jumilla	Jumilla	Murcia	Region of MurciaRegion of Murcia	2019

Lord of the Column, Cáceres. Virgin of Piedad, Cartagena. Christ of the Gypsies, Granada. Tamborated in Hellín. Procession of the Steps, Lion. Carroza del Paso Blanco, Lorca. Virgin of Rocío, Malaga. The Crucifixion of the Lord, Medina de Rioseco. Carros-Bocinas, Murcia. The Triumph of the Cross, best known as "La Diablesa", Orihuela. Our Lady of Solitude, Palencia. Christ of the Redemptive Agony, Salamanca. Jesus Clear, Seville. Step in Pucela, Valladolid. Virgin of Soledad, Zamora. Procession of Las Palmas, Zaragoza.

National Tourist Interest

Blessed Mary of Major Pain in the Holy Week of Badajoz, declared a National Tourist Interest Party.

This recognition is granted by the Secretary of State for Tourism of the Government of Spain.

Some festivities, such as Holy Week in Úbeda or Huércal-Overa, were recognized as Tourist Interest by the government, but without the terms "National" and "International". In addition, there are other mentions of Tourist Interest granted by the administrations of the autonomous communities.

Celebrations of National Tourist Interest

Celebration	Municipality	Province	Autonomous Community	Year of concession
Holy Week in Gandía	Gandía	Valencia	Valencian CommunityValencian Community	1983
Holy Week in Alcira	Alcira	Valencia	Valencian CommunityValencian Community	1988
Holy Week in Tobarra	Tobarra	Albacete	Castilla-La ManchaCastilla-La Mancha	1988
Holy Week in Cabra	Cabra	Córdoba	AndalusiaAndalusia	1989
Holy Week in Baena	Babe	Córdoba	AndalusiaAndalusia	2001
Holy Week in Ocaña	Ocaña	Toledo	Castilla-La ManchaCastilla-La Mancha	2002
Holy Week in Sagunto	Sagunto	Valencia	Valencian CommunityValencian Community	2004
Holy Week in Ciudad Real	Ciudad Real	Ciudad Real	Castilla-La ManchaCastilla-La Mancha	2006
Easter week of the Campo de Calatrava or Ruta de la Pasión Calatrava	Bolaños de Calatrava, Almagro, Calzada de Calatrava, Granátula de Calatrava, Pozuelo de Calatrava, Moral de Calatrava	Ciudad Real	Castilla-La ManchaCastilla-La Mancha	2016
Holy Week in Teruel	Teruel	Teruel	AragonAragon	2006
Holy Week of Badajoz	Badajoz	Badajoz	ExtremaduraExtremadura	2011
Holy Week in Astorga	Astorga	León	Castilla y LeónCastilla y León	2011
Week Santa Marinera	Valencia	Valencia	Valencian CommunityValencian Community	2012
Holy Week in Cieza	Cieza	Murcia	Region of MurciaRegion of Murcia	2012
Holy Week in Burgos	Burgos	Burgos	Castilla y LeónCastilla y León	2013
Semana Santa Calagurritana	Calahorra	La Rioja	La RiojaLa Rioja	2014
Holy Week in Ponferrada	Ponfer	León	Castilla y LeónCastilla y León	2015
Holy Week in Logroño	Logroño	La Rioja	La RiojaLa Rioja	2015
Holy Week in Jerez de los Caballeros	Jerez de los Caballeros	Badajoz	ExtremaduraExtremadura	2015
Holy Week in Albacete	Albacete	Albacete	Castilla-La ManchaCastilla-La Mancha	2017
Holy Week of Alcala de Henares	Alcalá de Henares	Madrid	MadridMadrid	2019

Food

Torrijas.

At Easter, the torrijas are very typical, a dessert made with stale bread, milk, sugar, cinnamon, eggs and olive oil. It is typical that each family makes them at least once during Holy Week.