Good Friday

Good Friday is a holy day for the Christian world and everyone celebrates it differently but I think no one celebrates like the Spanish do. Some of you out there might not know that the Spanish celebrate it in a big scale and it is ongoing for a week, which is what they call “La Semana Santa” (Holy Week). 

In the south of Spain is where the biggest celebration and devotion takes place across all cities. They do large and elaborate processions of scenes of the Passion, where different religious brotherhoods go out to the streets carrying large and heavy floats or “Pasos”. These pasos can weigh between 1 – 6 tons depending in which city you are in.

This year, breaking with tradition in my family, we decided to go to Malaga instead of Cadiz which is quite different. In Cadiz the Pasos are small in size as the old town in Cadiz has very narrow streets, but the fact the streets are so narrow gives the impression that the floats are huge. The best part to it in Cadiz is that all of them need to go into the Cathedral and there is plenty of seating to watch them go by. 

But the weather was proving to be a bit of a downside as rain was coming and the processions will not take place if it rains. So we went to Malaga instead as the weather was supposed to be better there but the menace of rain still was at large. 

This year was the 1^st time Nadia had gone to watch these processions because even though that she has lived in Spain before she has not really gone and seen them. Now in Malaga the processions are the largest in Andalucía after Sevilla, but it is also different in sense that in Sevilla the men carrying the floats are hidden underneath the float. In Malaga the men are on the outside as if it was floating on a sea of people.

The day started with a seafood feast as meat is not allowed on Good Friday and we headed to Malaga to see the processions. When we arrived in Malaga we spent some time trying to get our bearing and finding out where the different things where happening as we already knew the times. But after some walking and some coffee we managed to find one of them going by. After running around the old town we found a nice spot to sit down and wait for them to come as some locals had informed us most if not all were going to go down this street at some point during the night. 

We saw about 4 before a local woman told us that the next one was a special not only due to the size of the float being the biggest one we saw all night but also that it has a famous patron that would always go with it and also lead it through the streets. The person is Antonio Banderas who is from Malaga and he never misses La Semana Santa. A rumour was going around the crowd that they had seen him leading this float and also directed it out of the church. Sadly if he was there we did not see him as all the people leading this float had their face covered but who knows - maybe he was there.

It was beginning to get late in the evening so we made our way back to Gibraltar for some rest.