A friend told me: “You absolutely have to see Holy Week in Seville! As I’m retired and was in the area anyway, I’m spending Holy Week in Seville.
I am both surprised and moved by everything I see. Quebecers having put away any religious manifestation, even any manifestation of faith, for a long time, Seville upsets me. First of all, the people of Seville are warm, polite and smiling. They are warm in family, patient with children and they multiply the gestures of affection at all ages.
But what amazes most are the religious demonstrations in the streets of Seville. I believed, at first, in a folk tradition, but what I see and feel goes far beyond this impression. Not a business where you don’t find a holy image, not a balcony that isn’t decorated with colored sheets or twigs.
And above all, the innumerable crowd that participates in the celebrations. Religious society rubs shoulders with civil society, the police, the army, workers, penitents. Between Palm Sunday and Easter, there will be around 60 parades winding through the streets from the local church to the cathedral and returning to their home port through the shady lanes. Each procession is animated by hundreds of people who accompany the altar of the church, which will have been decorated for days by the parishioners.
All week, the people of Seville have put on their finery. You’d think it was just old people, but I haven’t seen, in ages, boys in jackets and ties and girls in spring dresses, all more handsome and happier than ever. All these people are between 15 and 25 years old, and the lovers, holding hands, go from church to church and from parade to parade. A culture shock that I did not apprehend.
Mixed with the crowd, I was also surprised to see all these people, including 15-25 year olds, making the sign of the cross as a Christ on the cross or a Virgin in Majesty passed by. All this in an atmosphere of rare fervor and serenity. There followed loud applause to encourage the bearers and other penitents.
I am not naturally nostalgic and far from me the idea of returning to the repositories of the month of May of my childhood, but seeing all these manifestations in Seville, I wonder if, at home, we have not relegated too quickly to forget our spiritual and historical heritage. I visited the Museum of Fine Arts in Seville, where there are essentially works recalling five centuries of Christianity in Spain. Will our children and our grandchildren be able to recognize the Christian experience of Quebec and its history since the beginning of the colony? It is to be hoped.