Holy Week

Festivals and cultural events fill Andalucia’s calendar. Every town and village has annual fairs featuring parades, dancing, fireworks and bullfights. The celebrations are held from April to October throughout the region. Many of them are religious. Others have their origins in pagan ceremonies marking the end of winter. Seville’s two most important celebrations are Holy Week and the April Fair.

Holy Week, or Semana Santa, is arranged into eight days of processions beginning with Palm Sunday and going through Easter Sunday. During this whole week the city of Seville transforms itself into a living scenario, where religious fervor, passion and an explosion of the senses take over the streets. In essence, it revolves around the marching in processions of penitents and Brotherhoods of the church, or cofradías, followed by musical bands and pasos, elaborate platforms of beautifully hand-carved images of the Virgin, of Christ or of biblical scenes. The processions leave churches all over town from early afternoon onward. They move through the city and return back to their resting place hours later.

Although Semana Santa is celebrated in many regions of Spain, it is in Seville where it takes on majestic proportions.Each year, on Monday of Holy Week, the ICS organizes a get-together for students, faculty, friends, and family members. It is a wonderful day in which we all enjoy together the procession of Saint Genevieve as it passes before our College and to which we make a floral offering to the Virgin.