Laziest Semana Santa

We're in Semana Santa in Spain, as the week before Easter is called here. And it's been the laziest week of my life! Just eating, reading and watching DVDs, heaven!
The weather has been really bad, cold and rainy, almost like Bristol! And I heard that in Bristol you had a lovely sunny week! Crazy weather.

The official holidays are just Good Friday and Monday after Easter but most Spaniard do what they call a puente (literally bridge, to take advantage of the days between the holidays) and take the whole week off, so most of my classes were canceled, I've just worked 1 hour on Monday and that was it.

Why do they call it Good Friday in English? If you think about it, there's nothing good about it as it's the day when Jesus was allegedly crucified. In Germany they call it Karfreitag meaning mourning Friday, and in Spain is viernes santo meaning Holly Friday which is more appropriate, but then, language is anything but logical.

For non religious people is a day with not much to do, more awful TV programs than the usual boring gossip, even most radios play sadder music this day, the shops are mostly closed and even the supermarkets are closed. In most parts of the country there are lengthy processions, where members of the cofradias dressed in long tunics with KKK's style hats in various colours, (the most popular being white and purple but everything seems to be allowed) carrying on their shoulders a gory figure of a crucified and bleeding Jesus. The picture shows one of the local Jesus being taking out for a walk.

You have to be a member of a cofradia or hermandad to be allowed to wear the full uniform and the membership is extrictly controlled; originally this was only open to men but since the 60's they have allowed women parading too.

Semana Santa en Sevilla is the best of the country, if you're into S&M of course, loads of bleeding Jesuses and crying Madonnas parade around town in a very dramatic fashion. There you even have some nuts crucifying themselves or offering other kinds of sacrifices. Plus you can watch the whole 6 hour parade on national TV.

Celebrities and, of course, some politicians do join the parades too.
Antonio Banderas, who was born in Seville, belongs to a cofradia and doesn't miss the Good Friday's parade, plus he brings all his family from US with him. See pictures here of him and his wife Melanie Griffith.

The Spaniards have a very developed sense of drama and this is one of the top events of the year for that. Very colourful and very local and it is definitely not done for tourist or for show, they take their traditions very seriously indeed.
Here in Catalunya people are somehow more reserved and don't do as much drama as people in the south, but the processions are very good nonetheless.

Of course, not everybody takes this seriously, as you can see in the cartoon here.

I'm looking forward at tomorrow's chocolate eggs.

Happy Easter my Christian friends and Happy chocolate holidays to everybody else!