So ive managed to find a video of the Holy Wednesday procession in Lanjaron. This is the bit that shows Jesus and Mary crossing and bowing to each other. Below the video is an article written by a local resident about Holy Wednesday in Lanjaron.
It’s Holy Wednesday and there’s a buzz of expectation in Lanjarón’s main street, Calle Real. Tonight our spa town in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains near Granada will once more be reborn as its shops, bars and restaurants open for a new holiday season after the long dull winter.
Just after 9pm we walk into town to join friends for the first and most solemn of the Holy Week processions. El Crucamiento – the Crossing of Jesus de Ecce-Homo and Maria Santisima de la Salud y Esperanza – has taken place here for at least 40 years, with rites and trappings that go back centuries. Seville and Malaga, Cordoba and Granada have far larger and richer processions, but tiny Lanjarón might well exceed them in its devotion to la Virgen.
Outside the 16th-century Iglesia de Incarnación, the penitentes who will take part in the procession mill around waiting for the line to form. In their long scarlet robes with matching capirotes, the mediaeval pointy hats with eye slits later adopted by the Ku Klux Klan, they might look sinister, but not when the hat is taller than the person wearing it. Young women who were wearing jeans and t-shirts this morning now look glamorous in tight black skirts and high heels, with towering mantilla combs holding their black lace veils in place. The marching band is here too, the players’ uniforms festooned with gold frogging.
Jesus De Ecce-Homo emerges from the church door on his candlelit platform of dark wood and silver with crimson velvet skirts. His purple robes are tugged down around his waist to show wincingly realistic cuts on his chest and back, and he has a dark bruise on his right cheekbone.
He is followed by la Virgen. This Mary, known as “la Esperanza”, is the special favourite of Lanjarón’s sizeable gitano or gypsy community. She is dressed in flowing dark blue velvet embroidered with gold. Dozens of tall white candles light up the white roses and lilies that fill her platform. The “capitan” who is organising her bearers, or costaleros, taps on the platform with a small silver hammer and gives the order: “Now raise her to Heaven!” We all applaud as the costaleros (who have been practising with sacks of flour since January) go from a crouching position to raise the platform above their heads – it can weigh as much as two tonnes.
Both images set off on a winding route through town that will take at least three hours. Some of the followers, known as silicios, will be wearing girdles of rough esparto grass, or have stones in their shoes or will walk barefoot to honour a vow. With our friends we jostle our way into our favourite bar to await their return.
Fernando Rubio was born and brought up in Lanjarón and has now retired here after a long career living and working abroad. He is glad to see the old traditions alive and well, but worries about fanaticos bringing football-style fervour to supporting their chosen religious brotherhood. “Young people join in, they compete to be the strongest and fastest on the night, but the religious significance is largely lost on them,” he says. “A few of them do have a personal spiritual attachment to la Virgen, but they no longer respect the Catholic church itself.”
His wife Dori, who lectures in French at Granada University, says she has little sentiment for the good old days. “As a child, I was traumatised by Easter,” she says. “I was told off for singing, or shouting, or even playing with my dolls. ‘Christ has died – you must be very quiet and good,’ they would tell me.”
Just after midnight we spill back out onto the street. Renewed whistles and clapping urge the exhausted bearers on. Shouts of “viva la Virgen” break from the crowd. At the corner of La Caixa bank and the little white Hermitage, the float of Jesus De Ecce-Homo slowly turns to face his mother, la Virgen, who has been following him through town at a discreet distance.
What happens next is simple: when the two platforms are almost face to face, Jesus stops and bows low to his mother. But to achieve this his bearers must coordinate precisely the shifting of their huge burden. Those at the front sink to their knees, tilting the whole platform forward before straightening up again. Everyone applauds and cheers them on.
A few moments later la Virgen is set down in front of the church and the bearers stop for a cigarette break. A small dark man with long grey hair in a neat ponytail raises his voice above the crowd in a thrilling saeta, an “arrow” of praise sung in her honour. The women cross themselves repeatedly and someone shouts “Viva, viva la Virgen!” Mary is backed into the church, disappearing into its candlelit interior. The Crossing is over for another year.
Will the Holy Week traditions still be honoured here in 20 years, or 50? Fernando thinks they will, though the beliefs behind them will continue to fade away. “It will become like a white wedding,” he says. “Young people don’t really understand why the dress has to be white, what it means. If you ask the band what they are playing for, what they are celebrating, most of them won’t know.”
Written by Arpi Shively.
A link to some great photos of Semana Santa throughout Spain by Fred Shively
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