Good Friday in Spain

Many, many years ago (in another life) we spent Holy Week in Spain. We had gone as chaperones with our friend Judy's high school Spanish class on a ten-day Spring Break trip.

Some things about the trip are indelibly fixed in my brain. We were in Seville and watched the out-lying churches carrying -- on their shoulders -- the Virgins on floats from their churches into the Cathedral to be blessed. The floats featured elaborately dressed and bejeweled statues of the Virgin Mary. Sometimes a smaller, less elaborate float with the Christos would follow behind. Underneath the heavy floats were barefoot men. Accompanying each float were bands of men in hooded outfits that resembled those of the Klu Klux Klan, only in the colors of that particular church. Other penitents in the procession would be carrying crosses or whipping themselves as they went. The processions at night were particularly eerie. Lit by flaming torches, sometimes the only sound from hundreds of people was the sound of bare feet on the cobblestone streets and the sound of the whips.

The students had gone to bed on Thursday night when the two chaperone couples decided to follow one of the processions to the cathedral. Only we did not realize for quite some time that they had already been there and were headed back to their rural church. By the time we figured it out we were very lost, it was very late, and very dark. We finally woke a cab driver who was sleeping in his car, who agreed (for a very good price) to take us back to our hotel in the city center.

We went into the main cathedral on Good Friday itself to find all of the altars (both the main and side chapels) covered with black cloths. All of the elaborate gold and silver chalices and other altar ware had been removed and all there was to see was the mounded black cloth covering the cross.

All of the stores and buildings except for the churches were closed. It was a very strange day and it seemed even stranger when our tour guide took us into the cathedral. The reverence paid to the Virgin Mary and the way everything shut down in observance of Good Friday gave us a different perspective about Holy Week.