Semana Santa in Granada - Marci

As with most festivities, what would be a one- or two-day affair in most countries, ends up a week-long fiesta in Spain. It is no different for Easter either, which is celebrated during Semana Santa, which can be translated into “Holy Week”. Every part of Spain has slightly different traditions for it, but you can always expect a huge number of processions, over-the-top outfits and marching bands.

Everyone was telling us that we need to be in Granada for Semana Santa to see how cool it is. Of course, I’m pretty sure all locals think their own city has the coolest celebrations, but I know that Granada goes crazy for Semana Santa. Something that is very typical for Spain in the processions are these outfits with masks that makes the wearer look like Klu Klux Klan members, but of course the roots of these here are much deeper than that, so it’s a bad comparison. They also have huge marching bands and massive “installations” (for lack of a better word) that they carry, depicting scenes from the Bible.

I was quite excited to see what was going to happen during Semana Santa, but actually the weather turned really, really terrible for most of it. It was cold, with pouring rain and strong winds for most of the week. In fact, a lot of the festivities had to be cancelled, and anyway we were not in the mood to go out and get soaked in the cold rain – watching La Casa de Papel sounded way too inviting.

On Sunday, I did get to see some of the processions in the end, so I didn’t completely miss out, but I do feel like I certainly didn’t get the best of Semana Santa… I saw the Los Facundillos procession, which was a children’s procession and another one, which was either the La Resurrección or the Resucitado de Regina procession. I’m not sure which one it was, because everything was happening later than scheduled. They were interesting to see, but overall the experience was fairly disappointing. Maybe in a few years I’ll be in Granada again and I’ll understand what the hype is about. Until then, I’ll be more excited about a few good coffee places and amazing the nature around here!