Semana Santa in Córdoba – Originally Published: Cordoba, April 2022

Evening. Shadows scale the ancient city walls, creeping upwards; blue silhouettes stretching across the warm granite. The first warm evening of the year tastes of pollen and incense. Somewhere within the medina a procession is marching towards the Mezquita. Dull echoes of bass drums ricochet through the web of a thousand medieval streets. Constant. Unrelating. It’s been going for days. The entire city seems to fall in step with that most uncompromising of rhythms. Slow, steady, inescapable: Thud. Thud. Thud-thud Thud. Through Puerta de la Luna and along the pebbled passageway. Bang. Bang. Bang-bang Bang. Probably the first conceived rhythmic measure, its primitive simplicity penetrates the brain, hijacks the natural motion of the body. Without realising, people now gravitating towards its source yield to that incessant hypnotic pulse. Concentrated by the narrowness of the winding streets, they convalesce into a single shuffling mass, a great subconscious into which everyone divides; some in double time, some in half; all in mathematical harmony with that great unseen presence: Thud. Thud. Thud-thud Thud. 

Night falls as around the Mezquita every cobbled street feeds the growing crowd. A writhing, sweaty organism eagerly absorbing the fresh bodies as they sway rhythmically into its engorged mass. It’s hot inside this creature made entirely of people. They clump together at every junction, flanking the cleared procession route barely maintained by a handful of police and rickety barriers. Some elderly women sit on camp stools. Teenagers shout at one another across the channel. It reeks of perspiration and beer, and all around innumerable different conversations compete with each other and the approaching drums. Above it all a small party of uniformed men and elegant cocktail-laden ladies observe the chaos from their elaborate iron balcony. Nobody notices them. All faces are fixed in one direction along the cramped street. A tunnel of eyes. Up ahead a heavy cloud of smoke drifts between the doorways and grilled window frames. It flashes and flickers like a storm, the glow of a hundred candles. A shuffling monster of countless feet and spines approaches from somewhere within. Close now, the drums reverberate like thunder. Tall swaying points puncture the smoky ceiling; some black, some white, some red. Incense smothers the ground, crawling up legs, sticking to hair, creeping closer and closer until finally with a roar and a blaze of colour, the procession emerges from the smoke.  

Trumpets blare. Cymbals clash. An endless parade of pointed hoods pass holding velvet banners and brass spectres. SPQR – the senate and the people of Rome, resurrected once again to condemn and crucify three criminals, one of whom is the Christian messiah. Religious or not, the impact of such striking imagery is undeniable. It heaves slowly into view, a colossal float walked delicately between balconies and signposts upon the shoulders of two-dozen men or more. They’ve been practicing this for months. One mis-timed step could unbalance the paso above, a risky error to make beneath a couple thousand kilograms. Taking tiny uniform steps, they edge the glittering scene around a hairpin turn. On the helmet of a roman officer, the brilliant feathered plumage sways with the steps of the straining men below. The tortured face of the Christian messiah, blood eerily lifelike in the shimmering candlelight, looks down upon the silent crowd – some devout Catholics, some awestruck tourists, mostly locals enjoying the fiesta after two years of pandemic. But right now, nobody moves, nobody speaks. The paso creeps around ninety degrees, every step measured, precise. The music grows in intensity – nearly there. Hands clasped in anxiety – nearly there. Suddenly with a rousing crescendo and an outburst of cheers and applause, the magnificent mass clears the turn, the cargadores below heft the enormous mass with renewed strength, and midst victorious jubilation, the procession marches on. 

The band follows. Alongside the drums and trumpets are clarinets, flutes, an oboe, a bassoon, trombones and, bringing up the rear, four fat tubas. Their polished black shoes squeak on the wax coated cobbles. Members of the clergy bear crosses, swing thuribles, alter boys with wide and sleepy eyes trot alongside, their faces a struggle between exhaustion and excitement. It is a sea of conical hoods – capirotes – and burning candles. When the procession periodically stops, children hang over the wobbly barriers holding out balls of wax on spindly wooden sticks upon which passing nazarenos dribble colourful candle wax. Some off duty cargadores wander amongst the crowd, as broad as they are tall, heads wrapped and bare armed they soak up the attention, beer in one hand, cigarette in the other. Some pose for pictures, pressing their sweaty bodies into the frame, grinning with pride and an overload of masculinity. Two young boys are sitting on the curb a little apart from where the family has set up camp for the evening: foldable chairs and a picnic basket. The younger holds a toy drum and, for better or worse, he watches as the enormous men revel in the moment with a mixture of awe and fear. 

But now the procession has changed. Silence descends like a wave along the street. Hushes and shushes hiss sobriety into the celebrations, smiles vanish, drinks abandoned. Dark figures emerge through the shadows. No music now, not even the clicking of hard leather soles on stone. Two abreast, the procession passes. Barefoot and hooded, rosary beads in hand, a thick wooden crucifix crushing down upon the right shoulder. Now there is only fear on the face of the child. He clutches his drum with small white hands An endless passage of unknowable penitents, a truly medieval scene. A few carry candles and sometimes, through the holes in the hood, the flame reflects in the whites of the eye, the only colour midst the whole chilling spectacle. But then, creaking and swaying, another paso approaches. Illuminated by numerous tiers of candles, guarded by her hooded black figures, the heartbroken face of a mother of one of the crucified men floats high above the crowd. She wears a heavy navy cloak, intricately woven with gold and silver, a shining crown adorns her head. Some onlookers bless themselves as she passes. A statue; silent and still, but so life-like in her expression of worldly grief and loss, and yet so beautiful that all, believers and non alike, are transfixed by her stately passage. And even when she passes and fades back into the night, when the chatter resumes and the drinking recommences, something has changed. 

– 

This was my first Holy Week in Spain. I’d been told about it for months leading up to it: how I’d get sick of the endless drumming and having to take thirty different diversions to get home in the evening. And yes, it does become rather irritating, especially when you’re trying to sleep at two in the morning through the infernal whine of wobbly trumpets a few blocks away. Spain is a Catholic country with a visible practicing community, but never in my life have I witnessed such a public expression of religion. In my narrow mind we lived in a largely rational, secular society, one in which religion is a private affair. But this last week has reminded me that faith and religion is still very much alive in 21st century Europe, and that a thousand of years of tradition and custom is not so readily relinquished. Nor, do I believe, it should be. Religion plays very little part in my life, and I was not expecting to be impacted in any way by Semana Santa. But that first procession; the music, the crowds, the visceral imagery – it packs quite a punch. I can imagine that for practicing Catholics it is a deeply felt and moving experience. Perhaps it was the effect of two years of pandemic showing, or the power of such a multi-sensory experience in a world increasingly interacted with largely through a screen and a headset, but the experience left me dazed and introspective. Some of the many floats that are carried through the streets of Andalucía every year are centuries old. I began to think how a few centuries ago, in world where accessible visual imagery was experienced mostly in the church, in a society ruled by the laws and decrees of the church, and wherein the only way to reach your god was through the medium of an ordained Latin-speaking member of the church, how being confronted with a life-size, life-like visual representation of your beliefs, evocatively lit by candlelight and walking towards and above you – how that would utterly overload the senses, much as it did to me. Were I experiencing this in the 15th century I would probably be left with no doubt as to the power and the glory. But I’m not, it’s 2022. For me, all I can say is that, religion aside, Semana Santa is an experience worth having. Just maybe don’t sleep near the cathedral!