Semana Santa

Hola Blogers,I hope you all had a good easter - or Semana Santa as it is known here. We drove down to my apartment on the south east coast and saw the processions in the city of Murcia. They are listed as being one of the top five of all of the processions in Spain (the famous ones of Seville being number one). I spent Semana Santa in Seville about 15 years ago and that really is a must see. Murcia doesn't come close to the drama of Seville but it was still worth seeing and very special.Semana Santa processions don't exactly induce a carnival atmosphere - as most street processions around the world do. They are quite somber affairs. Spain, unlike England, has done well not to commercialise the religious festivals. The religious aspect of the festival is everything here. In fact, in Murcia, and I suspect all over Spain, the festival is totally religious and there is no sign of commercialisation at all. No hideous hot dog stalls, or drunken heaps of teenagers littering the streets. Instead, crowds of people out with their entire families calmly watching the processions and, I suspect, thinking about their lives. I say this because, although I cannot profess to be a mind reader, I know thats what I was thinking about. You can't help but reflect when you see hundreds of local poeple walking by with bare feet and carrying crosses! Some have only one cross, but many have up to four. Jose explained this to me. Basically, the people carrying the crossed (and their are hundreds) are people who feel they have comitted a sin and want to repent. If they are carrying more crosses then they have obviously comitted more than one sin or maybe one sin but a really serious one - hence they want to suffer more by carrying more weight. So, as I said, it kind of gets you thinking as to how many crosses you should be carrying!S xx