We have received very special Easter offer from a hotel in the Basque Country for this Easter – 3 nights bed and breakfast, one dinner (with water), one free circuit of the spa, garage space, late check out…. Oh, and not forgetting a rather sinister looking man in a black hood and cape too! I’m sorry but I do find this mailshot rather off-putting, or am I just being ridiculous?

Spain celebrates ‘Semana Santa’, (Holy Week) much more than most other European countries. The whole week is filled with street processions, organised in the majority of Spanish towns each evening, from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday. Participants carry statues of saints on floats or wooden platforms in an atmosphere of mourning – which can seem quite oppressive to outsiders.

In some of the processions, marchers wear clothes reminiscent of the Klu Klux Klan. In fact their clothes are meant to represent ‘Nazareños’, people from Nazareth. It is the religious fraternities and brotherhoods of each town that are responsible for organising the processions, and the people who actually carry the sculptures and biblical scenes are known as ‘costaleros’. These floats are extremely heavy, and the costaleros have to be strong, as the processions will last for many hours. The pain that they suffer is likened to that experienced by Christ and the men consider it a great honor to carry the float, despite (and indeed, because of) the pain involved.

We have received very special Easter offer from a hotel in the Basque Country for this Easter – 3 nights bed and breakfast, one dinner (with water), one free circuit of the spa, garage space, late check out…. Oh, and not forgetting a rather sinister looking man in a black hood and cape too! I’m sorry but I do find this mailshot rather off-putting, or am I just being ridiculous?

Spain celebrates ‘Semana Santa’, (Holy Week) much more than most other European countries. The whole week is filled with street processions, organised in the majority of Spanish towns each evening, from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday. Participants carry statues of saints on floats or wooden platforms in an atmosphere of mourning – which can seem quite oppressive to outsiders.

In some of the processions, marchers wear clothes reminiscent of the Klu Klux Klan. In fact their clothes are meant to represent ‘Nazareños’, people from Nazareth. It is the religious fraternities and brotherhoods of each town that are responsible for organising the processions, and the people who actually carry the sculptures and biblical scenes are known as ‘costaleros’. These floats are extremely heavy, and the costaleros have to be strong, as the processions will last for many hours. The pain that they suffer is likened to that experienced by Christ and the men consider it a great honor to carry the float, despite (and indeed, because of) the pain involved.