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The Spanish Easter holiday

As days and months go by we get closer to the midpoint of our project. This time of the year also coincides with one of the most important holidays for Christians: Easter. You can find multiple different traditions all over the world regarding this date, however, in today’s article we will be talking about the Spanish way of celebrating it.



While in other countries the most typical thing is to paint eggs and wait for the Easter bunny among other practices; in Spain, we even have a specific name for this holiday: “Semana Santa”. If we translate this expression to English, we could name it the Holy Week. During this week, people go out to the street to celebrate Jesus’ arrival to Jerusalem, treason, death and resurrection. To symbolize these religious moments we organise processions in almost every single city, town or even village. In these parades, the people who actively participate dress up in many different outfits.

Each of the abovementioned days has a special outfit. For example, on Palm Sunday (the day Jesus arrived to Jerusalem), people usually take olive tree’s or palm tree’s branches and dress with light-coloured clothes; meanwhile on holy Friday, people usually dress with dark clothes to mourn Jesus’ death. These colours can be mostly seen in the costumes of the people who participate in the processions, who are called “nazarenos”. They are the ones carrying the candles in organised lines, and they walk along with the thrones. The thrones represent the different stages of the Holy Week, and they are actually carried by people who are called “costaleros”.

The Holy Week is one of the most iconic traditions in Spain, especially in the south part of the country. However, there is another holiday that takes place in this time of the year: “las fiestas de primavera”. The spring festival (if we translate it to English) is the most important holiday in Murcia, a region (county) is located in the south-eastern part of Spain. This festival is hold to celebrate the new season and to ask for a good harvest. It lasts a full week, and it includes multiple different activities and events. The two most important ones are “el Bando de la Huerta” and “el Entierro de la Sardina”. The first one is celebrated in Murcia, the capital city of the region, and people from all over the county go to see the parades, eat typical Murcian food in “barracas” (this is the name for a typical Murcian restaurant) and dress up with the typical regional clothing, which is called “traje de huertano”. In “el Entierro de la Sardina”, we celebrate the last day of the spring festival by organising the sardine’s burial. In this day, there is a big parade and it ends in the center of the city where a statue of a sardine is burnt.

As you can see, Spain is a very diverse country when it comes to holidays and traditions. You can see common national holidays such as “Semana Santa” that take place all over the country and, also, regional festivals such as the spring festival which is unique in Murcia. Did you know any of this holidays? Do you have something similar here in Romania?

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