This week in Spain they´re celebrating Semana Santa, their kind of Easter, the holy week, so even in Sanlúcar de Barrameda. It has been processions every day. We do not have these kind of Easter processions in Sweden.

It´s all about Jesus Christs last week of life here on earth, culminating with his crucifixion on Good Friday and the resurrection on Easter Sunday.

The weather forecasts where not good news for this week, it seem to have been rain in all Spain, so even here in Sanlúcar, though not as much as in the rest of Spain obviously and yesterday the clouds disappeared again.

I´m very glad to say that, because I were feeling sorry for the Spanish people to have such bad weather during their outdoors Easter celebrations.

The processions are going around to the towns churches for hours and hours and I must say that I admire the carriers strenght, because it´s very heavy to carry around and very complicated to turn around the street corners!

They´re called “pasos”, sculptures of individual scenes of the events that happened between Jesus’ entry in Jerusalem and his burial, or images of the Virgin Mary.

The carrying demands good teamwork for sure, even though they have some help from someone outside saying how they shall move. They can only take very small steps all the time. Admirable teamwork I would say and so they get some applauses for it too.

some in the procession are wearing the cery special “nazareno” or penitential robe, quite similar to the Ku Klux Klan robes in US, but these were commonly used during the medieval period for penitents, so they could demonstrate their penance, but with masked identities.

The whole town has been full of people during the time the processions goes on, quite a nice nightlife actually. All the bars and restaurants has been so crowded and even the streets.

Quite the oposite from what we´re used to in Sweden I must confess. They seem to have easier to enjoy themselves than we Swedes have too. Well, maybe not me and Mr Lifecruiser

What I do like though is that they seem to be able to handle the alcohol intake much better, we saw no one that was drunk or behaving badly during these nights out and it´s all ages, from babies to the most old ones.

We just love that and could easily adopt this kind of life..

This has been one of the times when it´s a blessing to be tall – I´ve been able to see over all the short Spanish people without any trouble, because most of them reaches me somewhere in the height of my chest

Yesterday the processions started around 23:00 and ended around 06:00 in the morning – phew – we did not stay to see it all night long. Just think about how the carriers must be suffering..

We did take some drinks and tapas at the Casa Balbino, a very popular bar and restaurant at Plaza del Cabildo. When the processions walked, there were for sure at least ten men behind the bar disk taking orders in a rush – with excellency. Quite admirable that too!

Though yesterday evening I got very sad sms updates on my Mom´s health that ended the evening out definitely – she hasn´t been eating for the past weeks, so this means that the end is coming very soon for sure.

I feel guilty not being able to be there now, even though I know that she wouldn´t be able to know that I´m there and all my other siblings are there, but, you know how it is – you wanna be there when someone close to you´re leaving this life.

As you already know, I did take farewell of her in my heart the last time I did see here, in case this should happen, but that is not quite the same thing.

So, as you understand, I´m not exactly in a good mood right now, thinking a lot of my Mom.