Nobody Moves, but the Float Does

Su padre lo hizo, su abuelo lo hizo.

Their father did it, their grandfather did it.

Let's go back a little further, though.

Because this didn't spring up out of nowhere.

Where does Semana Santa in its current form actually come from?

Las primeras procesiones empezaron en la Edad Media, pero la forma moderna de la Semana Santa viene del siglo dieciséis.

The first processions started in the Middle Ages, but the modern form of Holy Week comes from the sixteenth century.

En ese momento, la Iglesia Católica tenía un problema grande: el protestantismo creció mucho en Europa.

At that time, the Catholic Church had a big problem: Protestantism was growing fast across Europe.

Entonces el Concilio de Trento decidió usar imágenes, música y procesiones para enseñar la fe de una manera más emocional.

So the Council of Trent decided to use images, music, and processions to teach the faith in a more emotional way.

The Counter-Reformation, essentially turning religion into something you feel in your body rather than just believe in your head.

Spain was the natural home for that project.

España era el país más poderoso de Europa en ese momento y tenía una relación muy intensa con la Iglesia.

Spain was the most powerful country in Europe at that time and had a very intense relationship with the Church.

Las esculturas de los pasos son de ese período, muchas del siglo diecisiete.

The paso sculptures are from that period, many from the seventeenth century.

Artistas como Juan de Mesa o Gregorio Fernández crearon imágenes de Jesús y la Virgen que todavía procesionan hoy.

Artists like Juan de Mesa or Gregorio Fernández created images of Jesus and the Virgin that still process today.

We're talking about art that's four hundred years old being carried through streets at two in the morning.

That's a remarkable thing to think about.

Sí, y en el siglo veinte la Semana Santa tuvo otro momento importante: el franquismo.

Yes, and in the twentieth century Holy Week had another important moment: Francoism.

Franco usó la Semana Santa como símbolo de la identidad española, como propaganda.

Franco used Holy Week as a symbol of Spanish identity, as propaganda.

El régimen mezcló la religión con el nacionalismo, y eso creó una relación muy complicada que todavía existe.

The regime mixed religion with nationalism, and that created a very complicated relationship that still exists.

That's the layer that a lot of outside observers miss completely.

For people of your parents' generation, Octavio, this isn't just a religious memory.

It's also tangled up with dictatorship, with obligatory participation, with the Church as an arm of the state.

Correcto.

That's right.

Mi padre me contó que en los años sesenta era casi obligatorio salir a ver las procesiones.

My father told me that in the 1960s it was almost obligatory to go out and watch the processions.

No porque querías, sino porque la sociedad lo esperaba.

Not because you wanted to, but because society expected it.

Cuando Franco murió en 1975 y España se democratizó, mucha gente pensó que la Semana Santa iba a desaparecer.

When Franco died in 1975 and Spain democratized, many people thought Holy Week would disappear.

Pero no desapareció.

But it didn't.

Which is a genuinely fascinating thing.

Spain today is one of the more secular countries in Europe by any survey you look at, and yet Semana Santa is bigger now in some cities than it's ever been.

Porque no es solo religión.

Because it's not only religion.

Es cultura, es identidad, es familia, es barrio.

It's culture, identity, family, neighborhood.

Hay personas que no van a la iglesia nunca durante el año, pero salen a ver a su Virgen en Semana Santa.

There are people who never go to church during the year, but they go out to see their Virgin during Holy Week.

Para ellos, esa Virgen es parte de quiénes son, no solo de lo que creen.

For them, that Virgin is part of who they are, not just what they believe.

"Their Virgin." That possessive is doing a lot of work there.

Es que en Sevilla, por ejemplo, cada barrio tiene su cofradía y su Virgen, y la gente tiene una lealtad muy fuerte hacia ella.

In Sevilla, for example, each neighborhood has its own cofradía and its own Virgin, and people have a very strong loyalty to her.

No es la Virgen de la Iglesia Católica en abstracto.

It's not the Virgin of the Catholic Church in the abstract.

Es la Virgen de la Macarena, o la de la Esperanza de Triana.

It's the Virgen de la Macarena, or the Esperanza de Triana.

Son figuras locales con nombres, con historias, con fans.

They're local figures with names, histories, and fans.

Fans is the right word, actually.

I've seen photographs of people weeping openly when a particular Virgin passes.

Not in a polite, dignified way.

Openly, completely.

Sí, y eso tiene una explicación.

Yes, and there's an explanation for that.

Muchas de esas esculturas son del siglo diecisiete, y los artistas las crearon para provocar una respuesta emocional muy fuerte.

Many of those sculptures are from the seventeenth century, and the artists created them to provoke a very strong emotional response.

La cara de la Virgen, las lágrimas de cristal, las manos...

The Virgin's face, the crystal tears, the hands...

todo está diseñado para conectar con algo muy profundo en las personas.

everything is designed to connect with something very deep in people.

Baroque emotional manipulation, essentially.

But I mean that in the best possible sense.

These are master craftsmen working on a problem: how do you make a piece of wood make a grown adult cry in the street four centuries later?

And they solved it.

Y luego está la música.

And then there's the music.

Las bandas tocan marchas muy lentas, muy dramáticas, que se llaman marchas procesionales.

The bands play very slow, very dramatic marches called marchas procesionales.

Pero también existe la saeta.

But there's also the saeta.

La saeta es un canto flamenco que alguien canta desde un balcón cuando el paso pasa por la calle.

The saeta is a flamenco song that someone sings from a balcony when the paso passes through the street.

Toda la procesión para.

The whole procession stops.

Todo el mundo escucha.

Everyone listens.

Y cuando termina, el silencio es increíble.

And when it ends, the silence is incredible.

I actually heard one.

I didn't know what was happening.

This voice came out of a window above me and the whole crowd just went completely still.

It lasted maybe three minutes, and when it was over I realized my hands were shaking a little.

Eso es exactamente lo que tiene que pasar.

That's exactly what's supposed to happen.

La saeta es muy difícil de cantar porque necesita mucha emoción y mucho control al mismo tiempo.

The saeta is very hard to sing because it requires a lot of emotion and a lot of control at the same time.

Es como el flamenco más puro.

It's like the purest form of flamenco.

Y siempre habla del dolor, de la muerte de Jesús, de la soledad de la Virgen.

And it always speaks of pain, of the death of Jesus, of the Virgin's solitude.

Now, here's where I want to push a little, because there's a genuine tension at the center of all this.

Sevilla alone draws over a million visitors during Holy Week.

Hotels cost four times the normal rate.

There are bleachers set up along the routes.

At what point does a sacred ritual become a performance for an audience?

Es una pregunta muy honesta y no tiene una respuesta fácil.

It's a very honest question and it doesn't have an easy answer.

Hay personas en las cofradías que están muy preocupadas por esto.

There are people in the cofradías who are very worried about this.

Dicen que los turistas no entienden nada, que hacen fotos con el flash en la cara de la Virgen, que hablan cuando tienen que estar en silencio.

They say tourists don't understand anything, that they take photos with flash in the Virgin's face, that they talk when they should be silent.

Guilty.

Not the flash, but I definitely took photos.

Standing there with my phone out while a man next to me was quietly crying.

I felt the awkwardness of that.

Pero al mismo tiempo, la Semana Santa siempre fue un espectáculo público.

But at the same time, Holy Week was always a public spectacle.

Desde el principio, la procesión salía a la calle para que la gente la viera.

From the beginning, the procession went out into the street so that people could see it.

No es una misa privada en una iglesia.

It's not a private mass in a church.

Es un acto religioso en el espacio público, y eso siempre incluyó a gente que no era de la cofradía.

It's a religious act in public space, and that always included people who weren't part of the cofradía.

That's a fair point and it complicates the purity argument quite a bit.

The thing was designed to be witnessed.

Hay otro debate que me parece más interesante.

There's another debate I find more interesting.

Durante muchos años, las mujeres no podían ser costaleras ni llevar los pasos.

For many years, women couldn't be costaleras or carry the pasos.

En algunas cofradías, todavía no pueden.

In some cofradías, they still can't.

Es una discusión muy activa en España ahora, porque muchas mujeres quieren participar de la misma manera que los hombres.

It's a very active discussion in Spain now, because many women want to participate in the same way as men.

And that's the tension between tradition as living thing versus tradition as museum piece.

The moment you freeze it, you kill it.

But the moment you change it, people say you've lost it.

Exactamente.

Exactly.

Y la generación joven tiene una relación diferente con todo esto.

And the younger generation has a different relationship with all of this.

Muchos jóvenes son costaleros o nazarenos, pero no van a la iglesia.

Many young people are costaleros or nazarenos, but they don't go to church.

Participan en la cofradía como una forma de conectar con su ciudad, con su familia, con algo que es más grande que ellos.

They participate in the cofradía as a way of connecting with their city, their family, something bigger than themselves.

Which is actually not so different from how a lot of people relate to religious tradition in general.

You inhabit the ritual before you can articulate the belief, or maybe instead of it.

Para mí, la Semana Santa es eso.

For me, Holy Week is exactly that.

Yo no soy una persona muy religiosa, pero cuando escucho una marcha procesional en la radio, algo cambia en mí.

I'm not a very religious person, but when I hear a processional march on the radio, something changes in me.

Es una memoria muy física.

It's a very physical memory.

Huele a cera, a incienso.

It smells of wax, of incense.

Hay algo en esa música que me lleva directamente a tener ocho años en Madrid.

There's something in that music that takes me straight back to being eight years old in Madrid.

That's it, isn't it.

The smell of candle wax.

I noticed that too, standing in that street in Sevilla.

It's not a modern smell.

It belongs to another century.

Y eso explica por qué la Semana Santa no desapareció después de Franco.

And that explains why Holy Week didn't disappear after Franco.

Las personas no la hacen porque el gobierno lo pide.

People don't do it because the government asks them to.

La hacen porque la sienten.

They do it because they feel it.

Y eso es muy difícil de borrar con política.

And that is very hard to erase with politics.

Actually, one thing you said earlier is still in my head.

You said the processions go through the streets during the madrugada.

I've been meaning to ask you about that word, because it's been appearing all week in everything I've read about this and English just doesn't have a clean equivalent.

La madrugada son las horas entre medianoche y el amanecer.

The madrugada is the hours between midnight and dawn.

En inglés dices "early morning" o "the middle of the night", pero no es exactamente lo mismo.

In English you say 'early morning' or 'the middle of the night', but it's not exactly the same.

La madrugada tiene una personalidad propia.

The madrugada has its own personality.

Es un momento del día diferente, con una atmósfera especial.

It's a different time of day, with a special atmosphere.

So English collapses midnight and five in the morning into the same category, more or less.

Spanish keeps them separate.

And for Semana Santa, the processions of Thursday into Friday are actually called la Madrugá in Sevilla, with a capital letter.

The whole night has a name.

Exacto.

Exactly.

La Madrugá es la noche más importante de toda la Semana Santa.

La Madrugá is the most important night of all of Holy Week.

Las cofradías más famosas de Sevilla salen en esas horas, entre la una y las seis de la mañana.

Sevilla's most famous cofradías go out during those hours, between one and six in the morning.

Y hay personas que no duermen en toda la noche, solo para verlas pasar.

And there are people who don't sleep at all that night, just to watch them pass.

And now that word carries the whole thing for me.

The madrugada.

The time that has no English name, lit by four hundred candles, moving through streets that haven't changed shape since the fifteenth century.

Maybe that's what I walked into, around that corner in Sevilla.

A piece of time that doesn't belong to now.

Fletcher, eso fue casi poético.

Fletcher, that was almost poetic.

Pero la próxima vez que estés en Sevilla durante la Madrugá, por favor, deja el teléfono en el bolsillo al menos cinco minutos.

But next time you're in Sevilla during la Madrugá, please, leave the phone in your pocket for at least five minutes.