I have not had time to edit this, so I thought I would post it complete with wobbly and out of focus bits.
We went to the parade in Zafra – we thought that Seville was a bit far to go as we weren’t sure about the weather (it looked like rain and the parades get cancelled if wet). So we went on Thursday, which was the fourth day of parades. We went in effect to the matinee performance at 8 in the evening, as there was one later starting at midnight. So baring in mind that Zafra is not touristy – nor is it known for its Semana Santa parades, AND baring in mind that there had already been several 4 or 5 hour parades before this one, you can see how amazing the whole thing is. Different brotherhoods are responsible for maintaining different Christs and Virgins, each brotherhood has its own parade. So the one we saw would have had different statues and different hooded men. If you look closely you’ll see that they have a sort of medalion around their neck and this says what brotherhood they belong to.
Check out the lady walking past near the beginning wearing a mantiquilla (?)-you just see the top of her head when we are watching the band in the square. Also look at the man carrying the cross (towards the beginning) and see how it carries it. There are two handles, one each side and he takes the weight of the cross in front of him. He will keep this up for 5 hours – no wonder they keep stopping! Also look at the soldiers goose-stepping (right in front of the float at the end of the vid), again, they will keep this up until the early hours. The ‘paso’ with Jesus on it came out first (carried by men underneath, taking the weight on their shoulders), the second with the Virgin followed. My battery went flat just as Jesus arrived in front of me (there’s a message there I’m sure). There was as many people again – if not more behind, between Jesus and the Virgin and again behind her.
The crowd went silent as the Virgin passed which felt very strange. There were people with bare feet following her, and a lot of genuflecting. Every so often someone would start singing (wailing) and this voice would eerily float over the crowds. I’ve got some still pics as well, which I’ll sort out and post here.
We had to go home and watch Life of Brian to remind us what the church is really all about…
I know the video isn’t very good, but I can put it onto a cd if anyone would like to see a bigger version, it gets shrunk quite small for the blog.