Cosas de Sevilla #12 - Semana Santa

14 - 21 April 2019

Dear Family and Friends of The Texas Tech Center in Seville,

Things have been quite busy here lately! Since our last letter, students have done a lot of traveling, a lot of studying, and the opportunity to participate in Holy Week here in Sevilla.

Last week was a free week for the students. We all enjoyed the Holy Week, and, although it is celebrated all over Spain, it is especially popular in Seville. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 500,000 people come in and out of Sevilla during this week.

The celebration in Sevilla was from Saturday 13 april through Easter Sunday 21 april. There are 61 processions (6-8 a day) in which enormous "pasos", or floats, representing scenes of the last days of the life of Jesus Christ are carried around the streets on the shoulders of "costaleros", or bearers (usually 35 – 40 per float). Generally each procession has two pasos, which are followed by hundreds of "nazarenos", or penitents. Many of these floats are religious works of art and date back as far as the 1600´s. With the touching music accompanying the pasos and the thrilling atmosphere, it is considered not only a spiritual event, but also an artistic and cultural experience. The famous Macarena procession is out for over 12 hours and about 200,000 people view this procession along its route. I have included one picture of the float reentering the church, and you can see the mass of humanity.

On Palm Sunday, the first day of the Holy Week, we opened The Center for those students who wanted to live the experience and see one of the processions marching from its church, very close to The Center, to the Cathedral. The view from our balconies was amazing, and they could get to know this cultural aspect very well and take part of the event.

While some students were able to see some of the processions, many took advantage of the long week off to travel. Some of the international destinations included Portugal, England, Italy, Germany and more. All made it back safely. It was fun to see some of the pictures and hear of the travel experiences.

Life at the Center is pretty routine with classes, internship experiences, family relationships, and the friendships the students are developing one with another.

I am including a few pictures from the processions from Holy Week.

Lorum