TITLE: Popular Piety: Semana Santa in Spain

We were fortunate to be in Southern Spain for Semana Santa — Holy Week a few years back.
The penance processions and rituals in Andalucía lasted the entire week of Lent, and drew crowds of pilgrims and curious onlookers from Spain and around the world. The processions conducted by the Catholic brotherhoods, have their origins in the Middle Ages, although some may have been inspired as a response to the protestant reformation.
A common feature in all of the processions are the participants dressed in the penitential robe or ‘nazareno’, which includes a tunic, and a conical tipped hood that conceals the face of the wearer. This enables him to publicly demonstrate his penance, while concealing his identity.
The procession also includes women dressed in black who together with the nazarenos carry candles and rosaries and hand out candy and religious cards to the children who follow them. The kids also like to collect wax from the candles onto a pre-made ball, as an Easter souvenir! Some of the nazareno walk barefoot, carry crosses and have their feet in chains as an added penance!
The processions have taken us by surprise and it has been an experience to witness the blending of culture and religious belief as this period of lent is commemorated and celebrated here. We’ve learnt that the conical hat and robe date back to the time of Spanish Inquisition, when men and women who had been condemned wore it as a sign of public humiliation. The colour would signify the severity of the judgment handed down and wearing the robe in public was also meant to be a sign of shame on your family. When the Inquisition was abolished, the symbol of punishment and penitence was kept in the Catholic brotherhood.

AUTHOR: Nilmini De Silva (Australia)

Nilmini De Silva is a documentary photographer based in Australia, who passionately pursues her dreams and inspires others to do likewise. She likes to combine her creative passions with her technical experience as a civil engineer & project manager to create narratives that will help usher in a more regenerative way of living on the Earth. She has studied photography at the Australian Centre for Photography in Paddington. She has exhibited in a number of solo exhibitions in Sydney including Connections; Fate or Destiny; and Faces, Places, Races: Migrant Stories from the Hornsby Shire (Associated Exhibition at HeadOn).

She is the author of Fate or Destiny: Living Life with Passion, a collection of photos and stories that aim to inspire people to make conscious choices in life rather than to merely follow the well-trodden trail. She has also collaborated on projects that have raised awareness about social issues ranging from food waste, protection of old growth rainforest and breast cancer. Most recently she was an Artist in Residence on FLOAT, in Lake Tyers, Victoria. Her project attempts to demonstrate the role of art in creating a new more resilient economy in a time of change.

Nil loves discovering places that are off the beaten track and feel drawn to people who have the courage to think outside the square. She is inspired by the sense of freedom and adventure in the people she meets while travelling. She has always had a ‘spiritual’ connection with nature and prefers to travel ‘close to the ground’ in order to fully connect.