Holy Week in Malaga - Southern Spain

As the life-sized figure of Jesus Christ riding a donkey comes into view, the swaying movement of those carrying the float, the breeze ruffling his robe, and the candle flames flickering on his face, make him seem uncannily real. The people packing the sloping street watch in awed silence.
Behind the figure walk masked and white-gowned men, wearing the high pointed hoods of the Capuchin order. And behind them come more bearers carrying the Virgin Mary. In a white gown and gold crown, she looks young and lovely. Behind her comes a band playing solemn music; and hundreds more white-gowned people.
It is Semana Santa - Holy Week in Malaga. For the whole week the city will be a theatre, with scenes of the Passion, crucifixion and resurrection being carried in procession throughout the days and nights in a splendidly dramatic pageant.
I was staying in the city, and saw the floats being made ready. There are few places where they can be kept safe from year to year, so most of them are taken apart and stored in sections in churches or warehouses. During Holy Week they are carried to an assembly point on special stretchers, and are then blessed and assembled.
As I was staying near the Chapel of the old Noble Hospital, I watched their preparations in the Chapel grounds. On Monday two large bare platforms appeared: on Tuesday the cross was reverently put in place on one of them, and St John and the holy Maries fixed at its foot. On Wednesday the Virgin Mary was installed on her own platform; and people polished brass candlesticks and made wreaths and crosses with white lilies and carnations. On Maundy Thursday Jesus was fixed on to the cross, and huge white candles were inserted into the holders.
All week long processions dominated the streets. It seemed as though the city never stopped moving and people never stopped watching. Some were moved to tears. A woman told me that she and her friend stood watching every day: it was like sharing in the suffering of Our Lord and Our Lady.
Those who could afford it had seats on wooden stands erected specially for Holy Week; other lucky people watched in comfort from apartment or office windows. But most people, including me, stood on the pavements.
A few floats date back to the 11th century, but most of them developed from the period when Spain was liberated from the Moors, and the Roman Catholic monarchs [Queen Isabella especially] encouraged the carrying of religious statues though the streets as a triumphant declaration of faith.
The traditional statues of the Virgin are mostly beautiful and gloriously attired - looking not unlike Queen Isabella. Only in a few modern ones does she appear as a middle-aged woman in the dark clothes of the time.
Good Friday came, and it was time for the Noble Hospital’s float to parade. In the early afternoon, after Masses had been said all morning in the Cathedral, some 200 young men in long black gowns began wandering nervously about the hospital and chapel grounds, like actors before a play.
I talked to a woman in a Capuchin gown, cloth mask and flat hood, who told me it was the first time she had taken part in the procession, and she was anxious about getting through the six hours without food, drink or rest. But she had made a vow, she said, and she had to keep it. She had comfortable shoes - and it was said that by walking slowly, in step with everyone else, you became mesmerised and stopped noticing your aching feet.
The moment to sally forth arrived. One hundred of the black gowned men moved forward into their positions to bear the float of Jesus on the cross and the other hundred to bear the Virgin Mary. The priest blessed everyone and then with several other priests, five small children, gowned and hooded and an acolyte swinging a censer, he went out into the tree-lined road.
Under the orders of the leaders, the first hundred bearers - all more or less the same height - shouldered the Jesus float, took three steps forward in unison, lurched two steps to the side and four steps back, their gowns swinging rhythmically. Followed by the Virgin Mary float, they triumphantly burst out into the main road, moving slowly step after step behind the priests. We all cheered. Even the wino resting in the shade with his carton of cheap wine, saluted in respect.
The Spanish might be tempted to make their processions more gory spectacles if they were allowed but the Bishop keeps a firm rein on the proceedings. Not that long ago flagellation, when people walked behind the float, their bared backs being whipped until the blood ran, had to be stopped. However, despite complaints, the Bishop allows non-churchgoers and girls in mini skirts to take part in the parade.
Religion, he says, cannot stay shut up in churches. It must go out in the streets as well. And he himself walks in the procession.
First published in Church Times April 1999