La cofradía de la Paz

On Saturday night Paul’s parents arrived from the UK and finally on Sunday the Semana Santa started. We were right there, all excited and slightly sweating in the heat, to see the very first paso of the Holy Week. La Paz (The Peace) is one of the ‘big ones’ with 1900 nazarenos dressed in all white. Another great thing about this cofradía is that it goes through the Maria Luisa Park and in front of Plaza España which is my favourite place in Seville.

It was all so grand, there were pointy hats everywhere in a long, long line, the sun lit up their white tunics.

There were many children as well, some of them didn’t have their faces covered.

We found this little girl all dressed up, she was probably the smallest ‘altar boy’ in the whole Seville. She looked adorable!

A new thing we noticed here was that there weren’t only sweets in the deep, bulging pockets of the nazarenos, they also handed out little pictures of Jesus and the Virgin. I got one, too, from a grandfather who took one out of his granddaughter’s sweetie-collecting bag. It made me smile as it was actually a business card! It seemed these pictures were prized by the children and had an equal status to football cards.

We also saw ‘nazareno families’ where the adult and the child nazarenos walked hand in hand in the line.

An added bonus here was the riding squad.

Finally, the paso itself.

The second paso, the Virgin.

This was a great procession. The fact that it went through the Parque de Maria Luisa meant that there was a lot of space to see them and there wasn’t a very big crowd in one place. After seeing this we were all fired up to see some more!