The third week of my internship overlapped with a major local cultural phenomenon – Semana Santa (Holy Week). It is the Spanish version of Easter, with its own unique traditions.

The celebration doesn’t end with eating special desserts and spending time with family. All around the country during this week, you can see processions where people are dressed in long robes and conical hats that cover their entire faces except for the eyes. It is an intensely religious tradition, and only members of the brotherhoods take part in it.

I thought it would be a popular event to watch not only for tourists but for locals too. But none of my Spanish friends I asked had ever watched the processions in their entire lives! The reason is that none of them are Christians. It still came as a surprise to me that they were never interested in witnessing something so unusual.

However, the one thing that affects the entire population is the fact that everyone gets to enjoy a few days off work. The official holidays are Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. In reality, people barely work during the whole week. Most of them travel either for leisure or to spend time with their families. This year it ran from Sunday, March 29 to Sunday, April 5.

The processions consist of nazarenos (members of Catholic brotherhoods) walking slowly in solemn marches, dressed in long robes and capirotes (conical hoods). They represent penitents, and their costumes symbolize humility. Some nazarenos carry drums and trumpets, playing somber music, while others carry the pasos – gigantic platforms that weigh over 5,000 kg and feature depictions of either Jesus Christ or the Virgin Mary.

I saw the procession in Linares, which is a small city in Andalucía, the southern region of Spain. But the best place to see it is definitely Seville, though it gets far more crowded than Linares. So if you prefer a more peaceful experience of the holiday, I recommend going to a smaller town.

Linares was actually the first city in Spain I visited outside of Madrid. The first thing to note is the siesta and cafés’ working hours. In Madrid, restaurants operate much like in any other country. But once you go to a smaller town like Linares, everything is closed between 16:00 and 20:00. We arrived in the city at 16:00, and finding a place for lunch turned out to be very challenging!

The next destination during the holiday was Granada. It is a city in Andalucía at the foot of the Sierra Nevada mountains, famous for the Alhambra – a breathtaking palace and fortress complex built by the Nasrid dynasty in the 13th-14th centuries. Granada is special because it was the last stronghold of Muslim rule in Spain before the Reconquista ended in 1492, giving it a unique blend of Islamic and Catholic heritage that you can see everywhere in its architecture, the narrow winding streets of the Albaicín quarter, and even its cuisine. 

I really wanted to visit the Alhambra, but I didn’t book tickets in advance. The next available date was a month later! There was no way of knowing beforehand that I would be in Granada, because this trip to Andalucía was very spontaneous. I hadn’t planned on going there until a friend of mine called me two days before the trip and invited me to join them for a couple of days. It was the best decision to go, since during the holidays almost all the stores and cafés are closed, and everyone else is also traveling. In the end, we just walked around the city, and I took a lot of photos! 

After spending one day in Granada, it was time to go back to Madrid and continue with the regular working week.