Semana Santa

Happy Sunday!  For those of you in Europe, I hope you’re adjusting to the time change.  It’s never easy springing forward, even when you know you “gain” an hour.  Here on Mallorca, this weekend marked the beginning of Semana Santa, the Holy Week before Easter.  The week is filled with lots of processions leading up to the main event {Easter}.  I don’t know a lot about the processions, but, from umpteen years of Spanish class, and Wikipedia {actually about.com}, they were designed in the 16th century by the Catholic Church to present the story of the Passion of Christ so everyone could understand.  If you ask me, from what I saw, it was super confusing and I understand less now.  There were lots of images of Christ and crosses, a lot of drummers and people in costume, but nothing very coherent for me.  However, I am a bystander, this is my first Semana Santa, and just because I didn’t take anything away from it doesn’t mean that there is nothing to be taken away.  Also the horses at the beginning were beautiful!

I’ll let my pictures tell the story.

*These are from two different processions – Friday night, when I was just trying to get across the center of town to buy water at the supermarket before it closed, and this evening.  I didn’t stay until the end of either, but I was there for a solid hour this afternoon.

*Just because I didn’t understand what was going on doesn’t mean it wasn’t beautiful.

What’s the most impressive Holy Week demonstration you’ve seen?  How does your community celebrate it?

Update:  I was informed by a very reliable source that what I saw wasn’t an actual procession, just practice for the procession that will happen later in the week.  The actual procession, when it takes place, will be 5+ hours long.