5 April 2012
Now that I've seen a few more Semana Santa processions, I can write a little more about some other traditions/observations that I've made.
First, children are a lot more involved in Semana Santa processions than I expected. At most of the processions, I have seen kids dressed as nazarenos--some with the capirotes (conical hoods) and others without. The young people in this photo are carrying crosses as well as passing out candy to the little kids. Since the nazarenos can be kind of scary figures (I'm an adult, and I think they are a little unnerving!), the children nazarenos give out candies to little kids in order to help them be less scared of the hooded figures.
By the end of the procession, some of the kids look about ready to fall over with exhaustion. Admittedly, walking around for 3 hours is tiring for any kid.
Up until this point, I hadn't seen the end of a procession--mostly because they are so long. While most of the procession is very solemn and serious, the end of the procession is less so. Whether this is to celebrate the fact that the nazarenos, the band, and the costaleros have made it through the 3 to 5 hour procession or if it's supposed to religiously represent the triumph of Jesus over death, I'm not really sure....
At the end of a couple processions I watched, the band started to play more upbeat music when the paso (platform) reached it's final destination--in this case, in front of the Ayuntamiento (City Hall). At the ding of the bell, I saw the costaleros (platform carriers) lift the paso as high as they could and make it sway back and forth to the applause of everyone in the crowd.
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