AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
Fifty years ago, Spain was about 90% Catholic. Now it's less than half. Despite that decline, the country's Holy Week processions remain extremely popular, uniting young and old, the sacred and the secular. Reporter Alexis Marshall takes us now to Seville, where the country's most elaborate processions take place.
ALEXIS MARSHALL, BYLINE: I'm starting to hear the faint sound of drums in the distance, and people are filling in on the street. People have come out onto their balconies to look out onto the parade.
(SOUNDBITE OF DRUMS)
MARSHALL: A youth band opens this procession, followed by thousands of people, including hundreds known as nazarenos dressed in matching white robes and pointy blue hoods. Their outfits are inspired by the clothes penitents wore during the Spanish Inquisition. The marchers range in age. Some of the youngest ones are already tuckered out, being pushed in strollers or carried by parents. Others are Holy Week veterans. They've been walking as nazarenos for years, and as they pass, immaculately dressed children line the streets and hold out their hands for candy or little cards with pictures of Jesus and the Virgin Mary. A family next to me has just gotten one for their baby.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Speaking Spanish).
MARSHALL: These nazarenos each belong to what's known as a brotherhood, open to Catholic men and women of all ages. During Holy Week or Semana Santa, 61 of these brotherhoods snake through the city from their home church to the Gothic cathedral in the center of Seville. They form an entourage for enormous floats or pasos, topped with life-sized sculptures of Jesus and the Virgin Mary, often hundreds of years old. Vivid purple and red flowers adorn the float that's passing by now. It shows Jesus hanging on the cross and Mary kneeling on the ground, looking up mournfully.
These delicately carved, gilded floats weigh thousands of pounds. To make the journey, teams of strong men called costaleros work in shifts, hoisting the floats onto their shoulders, swaying back and forth, shuffling over cobblestones, unable to see what's in front of them. While this whole display appears deeply religious and indeed is for some people, it's not that way for everybody. Take, for example, Maria Angeles Bermudo. Although she's not a practicing Catholic, she grew up coming to these processions, and they still make her emotional.
MARIA ANGELES BERMUDO: (Speaking Spanish).
MARSHALL: "It's art walking through the streets," she says. And for many people, it's the culture and pageantry of Semana Santa that makes it special. But for those like Maite Olivares...
MAITE OLIVARES: (Speaking Spanish).
MARSHALL: "Holy Week means an expression of faith." And she expresses her faith in a way unique to Spain and typical of this region, with the saeta. That's a passionate a cappella flamenco song, often improvised, devoted to Jesus and to Virgin. She's been doing this for years.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Vocalizing).
MARSHALL: She describes the experience of singing it as intimate and explosive with a wild mixture of emotions - pain and ecstasy, sorrow, and happiness.
OLIVARES: (Speaking Spanish).
MARSHALL: "In that moment," she says, "it's an implosion of everything in a single expression." The processions end today when the final brotherhood marches its pasos through cobblestone streets to the main cathedral, drums booming and horns blaring in step with a tradition that stretches across centuries.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MARSHALL: For NPR News, I'm Alexis Marshall in Seville. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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