Valladolid (EFE).- Ten days of art, devotion and holidays appear every year in Castilla y León between Friday of Sorrows and Easter Sunday, this year with the renewed joy of thousands of brothers after a year of suspension (2020). and two at half throttle (2021 and 2022) due to the restrictions imposed by the pandemic.
Processions, kisses, offerings, transfers, promises and misereres make up a celebration that has the same script, the one that the evangelists left about the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, but with the nuances that each population imprints as a result of roots and tradition.
This expression of popular religiosity results in celebrations classified as of International Tourist Interest in the case of Valladolid, Zamora, Ávila, León, Palencia and Salamanca, as well as in the Valladolid towns of Medina de Rioseco and Medina del Campo.
Friday of Dolores with La Morenica in León
Every Friday of Dolores the procession of La Dolorosa, popularly known as ‘La Morenica’, opens Holy Week in León. The parade, which dates back to the 15th century, starts from the church of Nuestra Señora del Mercado where the previous day the descent of a carving that does not belong to any brotherhood and whose authorship is attributed to a pilgrim is verified.
Segovia and the Good Death, Passion Saturday
The Cristo de la Buena Muerte leaves the cemetery chapel every year to star in a Via Crucis in Segovia that unites the Carmelite convents of Segovia, that of the mothers that Santa Teresa founded, and that of the fathers where part of the remains of Saint rest. Juan de la Cruz. All the brotherhoods participate and that of the ratchet is the only sound that is heard, apart from the footsteps.
The Christ of Otero blesses Palencia on Palm Sunday
Twenty-one meters high is the Cristo del Otero that Vitorio Macho conceived for Palencia, a monumental image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus that every year, since 1930, blesses from the heights on Palm Sunday. Until the hill where the colossal sculpture rises, the procession of the Holy Rosary of Pain will arrive.
Mother and children are in Ávila on Holy Monday
On Holy Monday, the first Gothic cathedral in Spain presides over one of the most special moments of Holy Week in Ávila: the meeting of Christ and his mother, in an exciting act where the two images, arriving in different processions, slowly approach ‘danced’ by the anderos that carry them.
The University, protagonist of Holy Tuesday in Salamanca
Essential within Holy Week in Salamanca is the Promise of Silence of the University Brotherhood, on Holy Tuesday in the Patio de Escuelas, in front of the Plateresque façade of the University. The rector and deans dressed in academic dress attend. The procession begins in the Clerecía with the university anthem, the Gaudeamus igitur, and is characterized by its austerity clothing: black tunic and esparto sandals.
Silent oath on Holy Wednesday in Zamora
Not all are processions. Sometimes other ordinary but prominent acts within the life of the brotherhood are overwhelming, such as the oath of silence that 2,500 brothers will assume on Holy Wednesday, with the Cristo de las Injurias as witness and the cathedral in the background, in the middle of a muted square.
Zamora, Miserere of Holy Thursday
It is the song of the Miserere, on Holy Thursday in the Plaza de Viriato, one of the epicenters of Holy Week in Zamora, Castilla y León and the rest of Spain, in front of the urn of the recumbent, lit with torches and a dense silence that overwhelms during the hours prior to the holy sacrifice.
Friday of the Cross in Valladolid
Inheritors of the preaching of the 16th and 17th centuries, Valladolid recovered in the mid-20th century the Sermon of the Seven Words on Good Friday, to whose attendance a group of horsemen-brothers convened who, hours before, proclaimed the act and the name of the preacher , this year the Bishop of Valladolid, Luis Argüello.
Hours later, the General Procession will take to the streets of Valladolid. It is the most anticipated, followed and known for the quality of the carvings that parade to represent the drama of the Passion, from the Oración del Huerto to the Resurrection. This year marks the centenary of its establishment, in 1923.
Vespers of Light in Soria on Holy Saturday
The song of the magnificat, in front of the ruins of San Nicolás, preludes Holy Saturday in Soria to the imminent Easter Sunday. This sung prayer is part of the Vespers of Light procession that starts from the church of the Franciscan Fathers and ends at the co-cathedral of San Pedro.
Resurrexit: the descent of the Angel in Aranda de Duero (Burgos)
The angel who announced to the Virgin the resurrection of her son is the same one who removes the black veil that hides her face of bitterness, the relief of mourning that the devotional sisters symbolize with the white of hope on their veils and mantillas.
This passage has its ritual and scenic correspondence in Aranda de Duero (Burgos) and Peñafiel (Valladolid) with what is known as the Bajada del Ángel, a dressed child who lowers himself with a pulley contraption (comes down from heaven) and removes the veil from the Virgin. EFE