Semana Santa

Vaya, esta vez nos olvidamos de dirigir a tiempo la atención hacia la Semana Santa de Úbeda, tal como hicimos el año pasado. Estas fiestas son verdaderamente de las más arraigadas e imponentes de Europa, y en ellas se involucra toda la ciudad. Empiezan oficialmente el Domingo de Ramos, pero las dieciocho cofradías de origen medieval se preparan durante meses, casi durante todo el año anterior. En su blog documentan día a día los acontecimientos con imágenes, texto y vídeo. El año pasado ya presentamos en detalle el orden de las procesiones y su desarrollo a lo largo de la semana, pero cada año hay también novedades. Con las líneas evocadoras del hijo ilustre de Úbeda Antonio Muñoz Molina en su novela Sefarad entendemos cuánto significan estas celebraciones para la ciudad y para toda España:

We have forgot to tell you in due time to follow with attention the events of the Holy Week in Úbeda just like we did in the last year. This series of celebrations which belongs to the most traditional and largest ones in all Europe and which sets all the town in motion, officially began on Palm Sunday. However, the eighteen confraternities of medieval origin have been preparing to it for months, or rather throughout all the previous year. On their common blog they document the events day by day in photo, text and video. In the last year we have already presented in detail the processions following each other in this week, but they bring some novelty as well in each year. From the evocative lines of Úbeda’s great son Antonio Muñoz Molina in his novel Sefarad we can understand how much these celebrations mean to the town and to the whole Spain:

Nos gustaba volver con nuestros hijos pequeños y nos enorgullecía descubrir que se emocionaban con las mismas cosas que nos habían ilusionado en la infancia a nosotros. Querían que llegara la Semana Santa para ponerse sus trajes diminutos de penitentes, sus capuchones infantiles que les dejaban destapada la cara. Apenas nacían los inscribíamos como hermanos en la misma cofradía a la que nuestros padres nos habían apuntado a nosotros. Viajaban ansiosos en el coche, ya un poco más crecidos, preguntando nada más salir cuántas horas faltaban para la llegada. Habían nacido en Madrid y hablaban ya con un acento que no era el nuestro, pero nos daba orgullo pensar y decir que pertenecían a nuestra tierra tanto como nosotros mismos, y al llevarlos de la mano un domingo por la mañana por la calle Nueva igual que nos habían llevado a nosotros nuestros padres, al subirlos en brazos ante el paso de un trono para que vieran mejor al borriquillo que cabalga Jesús entrando a Jerusalén, o la cara verde y siniestra que tiene Judas en el paso de la Santa Cena, sentíamos consoladoramente que la vida estaba repitiéndose, que en nuestra ciudad el tiempo no pasaba o era menos cruel que el tiempo tan angustioso y trastornado de la vida en Madrid.

We were happy to return together with our small kids and we have discovered with pride that they were enchanted by the same things which had also enchanted us in our childhood. They could hardly wait the Holy Week to come, when they can put on their small penitent’s clothes and children’s hood which leave the face free. As soon as they were born we inscribed them into the same confraternity to which our fathers had inscribed us, too. They were not much older now, as they sat excited on the back seat of the car and kept asking us how many hours we need yet to get there. They were already born in Madrid and spoke in a dialect which is not ours, but we were proud to think and say that they also belonged to our land, just as much as ourselves. And when on Sunday morning we take them by the hand, as our parents had taken us, to walk out on the calle Nuova and to lift them up when a throne passes by so that they could better see the ass’s colt on which Jesus had entered Jerusalem or the green and sinister face of Judas at the Last Supper, we are consoled by the feeling that life repeats itself, that in this town of ours time does not pass by, or at least it is less cruel than the anxious and chaotic time of life in Madrid.

Pero también las otras ciudades españolas celebran la Semana Santa con procesiones diarias. Wang Wei nos ha enviado bonitas fotos de la procesión de lunes en Palma de Mallorca. «Es una procesión pequeña», escribe, «prácticamente de Santa Clara a San Francisco. Dan la vuelta justo a nuestra casa por la calle de Montesión y luego por la calle del Sol. Siguen casi el perímetro del antiguo ghetto (el call –judería– es precisamente el nombre de la calle que se ve en las primeras fotos). Al ser una procesión pequeña, sin ningún turista, es más impresionante. Se ve bien el fondo, las raíces católicas de un pequeño pueblo, replegado sobre sí mismo, como era Palma hace siglos, y no solo el espectáculo turístico en que se va convirtiendo poco a poco.»

But the other Spanish towns also celebrate the Holy Week with daily processions. Wang Wei has sent us nice photos on the Monday procession in Palma de Mallorca. “It is a small procession,” he writes, “actually only from the Santa Clara to the San Francisco. They pass exactly in front of our house, on calle de Montesión, on the border of the ancient ghetto (the name call – ghetto – indicates precisely the street that can be seen in the first photos). It is impressive exactly because it is so small, without any tourists. They display the origins and the Catholic roots of a small settlement closed in itself like Palma was centuries ago, and not just a touristic spectacle into which the city has been converted step by step.”

Desde el call la procesión entra en la calle de Montesión. Asomados a una ventana de la casa de Wang Wei seguimos el desfile hacia la iglesia de los jesuitas, construida prácticamente sobre la antigua sinagoga.

From the call the procession enters the calle de Montesión. From a window of Wang Wei’s house we watch it proceeding towards the Jesuit church which was practically developed from the old synagogue five hundred years ago.

Las grandes procesiones de Palma, claro está, son las del Jueves y Viernes Santo. La multitudinaria es la del Viernes; sin embargo, la mayor devoción es para la del Jueves, la del Crist de La Sang (Cristo de la Sangre). Este año, después de muchos en que no fue así, la imagen salió de la Iglesia del antiguo Hospital General, donde está siempre, y llegó hasta la Catedral.

However, the main processions of Palma obviously take place on Holy Thursday and Friday. The largest one is that of Friday, but the most devotional one is the Crist de La Sang (Christ of the Blood) on Thursday. In this year, after several years when it was organized differently, the image started from the Church of the old Hospital General where it is conserved, and arrived to the Cathedral.

En nuestro pueblo la fiesta no es tan suntuosa, pero en majestuosidad seguramente no queda detrás de las españolas.

In our village the feast is not so sumptuous, but in majesty it surely does not leg behind the Spanish ones.

Andalusian Holy Week

On the El País web forum in which I also participate, this is already the second year that web guru and olive planter porrozillo has published the photos of the Holy Week processions in Úbeda. This year he only sent a short video, but it reminded me to publish here the photos of the previous year to demonstrate that there are places where they still do it properly.

The Andalusian Úbeda, on Unesco’s World Heritage list, is famous for its olive plantations and its Holy Week processions. These latter have been organized by the city’s eighteen religious confraternities active since the Middle Ages. The ceremonies start already at the beginning of Lent with posters, advertisements and publications, daily festive Stations of the Cross, pageants presenting the holy images and statues with the partecipation of thousands of persons, as well as public rehearsals of the bands on the main square. The common blog of the confraternities publishes illustrated daily reports on all that. By the way, the series of Lenten and Holy Week feasts is only the biggest among the ten similarly generous feasts organized throughout the year by the confraternities, and in addition there are also yearly four flamenco and old music festivals in the city. After all, one has to fill out with something the dead time between the pruning of the olives and the harvest.

The Holy Week ceremonies start on Palm Sunday with the entrance of Christ in Jerusalem. This is organized by the Borriquillo (Ass’s colt) confraternity from eleven in the morning until the fireworks of nine in the evening.


On Monday the confraternity of Our Lady brings forward with all solemnity the statue of the Virgin from the church of Santa María de los Reales Alcázares, so that she would also start her all week long way to the Golgota, accompanying the image of Jesus in every other procession.


On Tuesday night from ten o’clock celebrations of Tenebrae, and then a night procession with the Cross throughout all the city.


The Wednesday procession on the vigil of the Last Supper was washed out by a downpour, but the commemoration was nevertheless celebrated.



On Thursday morning, prayer on the Mount of Olives.


Then a series of processions follow throughout all the day, each celebrated by a different confraternity: that of the Column, of the Flagellation, and, already at the dawn of Friday, the Sentence.






On Friday, at sunrise starts the procession of the Road to the Calvary, organized by the Jesus Nazareno confraternity of the guild of the oil pressers since the 1400s. The commemoration of each of the three Falls under the Cross are taken over from them by other processions. At three o’clock in the afternoon starts the procession of the Death on the Cross.





After the procession of the Descent from the Cross, at seven o’clock in the evening starts that of the Vigil or of the Pietà. This is the largest one among all, organized with the participation of all confraternities, twenty processions with forty-nine images all in all.





Finally, the series of Holy Week commemorations is closed on Sunday morning with the High Mass and the procession of the Resurrection.


If you are curious of videos and more photos, have a look at the blog of the Úbeda confraternities, where you can also read the reportages on the Holy Week of this year.

Espacios en blanco

En una vieja arca llena de papeles familiares acabamos de encontrar un pequeño legajo con tres documentos manuscritos firmados en el pueblo de Canales de la Sierra, dos de ellos son escrituras públicas fechadas en 1683 y otro, de carácter eclesiástico, en 1763; y hay también otro documento eclesiástico fechado en Pamplona en 1688 pero con asuntos relativos asimismo a la villa de Canales. Ignoramos completamente cómo llegaron hasta nuestra casa y qué relación guarda aquella lejana zona con nuestros antepasados. Intentaremos averiguarlo.

Pero el legajo, además, guarda un impreso curioso. Se trata de una «Carta de Esclavitud» o declaración de ingreso en la Cofradía de los Esclavos de la Virgen. Aún hoy, en ese hermoso pueblo de Canales, en el que solo quedan unos 80 habitantes censados, se celebran fiestas a su patrona, la Virgen de la Soledad, el último sábado de agosto. El eje de la celebración es la romería a la Ermita de La Soledad, allí donde debió haberse firmado el documento que reproducimos y que por su aspecto parece de inicios del siglo XVIII. Quizá alguno de nuestros ancestros se sintió atraído por la Cofradía y acarició en sus manos este papel cuyos blancos tenía que rellenar con su nombre, el de los santos de su devoción, y luego fecharlo y rubricarlo. No lo hizo. El papel quedó olvidado en un arca que por casualidad hoy hemos abierto. Un pequeño misterio entre tantos. Como decía la buena de Dorotea en el capítulo 30 de la primera parte del Quijote: «Todo es milagro y misterio el discurso de mi vida».