Semana Santa Oviedo 2018

abril 02, 2018

Semana Santa Oviedo 2018

Procesión de Jesús Resucitado. Calle Mons

Oviedo, Easter Sunday, 1 April, 2018

By some accounts, this was a disappointing Semana Santa for Oviedo, as rain showers forced the cancellation of some of the scheduled processions, including the most anticipated one, the Procession de la "Madruga", which was to start at midnight on the night of Jueves Santo at the chapel of the historic Universidad de Oviedo and slowly meander throughout the old city until 5 am.

But for us--new residents of the city--there was plenty of ceremony to gape at: monumental statues of suffering Jesuses and Marys carried on festooned platforms borne on the backs of strong young men, the solemn lines of hooded priests and churchmen processing to drumbeats and dolorous horns, preceded by young girls bearing incense and flowers and followed by black-clad matrons in mantillas and high heels.

As a scholar of the classical world, coming across these displays of the city's religious brotherhoods (hermandades y cofradías) made me feel like I had been thrown back into antiquity. It was as if I were watching a procession in 5th-century BCE Athens (like the Panathenaia represented on the Parthenon frieze): young girls carrying the new robe for the goddess Athena, priestesses and women of Athens bearing gifts, metics (foreign residents like me!) dressed in special purple robes and carrying trays of cakes and honeycombs, musicians playing pipes and lyres, a colossal robe for the statue of Athena Parthenos hung on the mast of a ship mounted on wheels, and ranks of old men carrying olive branches followed up by military chariots, the calvary, the infantry, and, at the end, the citizenry.

Statue of Jesus tied to the whipping post. Martes Santo, 27 March

Procesión del Silencio, Iglesia Sta. Maria la Real de la Corte

Of course the Catholic context of the Semana Santa processions is quite different from the pagan past, and the sponsoring Christian brotherhoods have their origins in the Medieval world and the Baroque Counterreformation and not in Classical Greece. Nonetheless the number of similarities between these modern practices and classical antiquity is still striking, especially the close link between church and state--the official Spanish policy of separation between the two notwithstanding. Here in Oviedo, as each statue emerged from the church where its procession began, the musicians accompanying that icon would strike up the Spanish national anthem (a lovely tune to which, unusually, there are no official words) and the onlooking crowd would break into applause.

Procesión del Silencio, Martes Santo, 27 March, 2018

Procesión del Sant Entierro, San Isidoro el Real

Good Friday, 30 March, 2018

I just loved the way that on Good Friday, the Procesión de Santo Entierro, which started at the San Isidoro church just up the street from us, began with a procession of young children carrying a miniature crucifix.