It’s easy to fall in love with Sevilla, majestic monuments, beautiful gardens, lively atmosphere. One week leading to Easter, Spain celebrates Semana Santa, holy week. In Sevilla, it’s probably the biggest festival of the year. We did not plan to take part in the celebrations, but by coincidence we ended up right in the middle of it all.
As we were driving back to the city from a day-trip, the traffic was getting denser and denser. Nothing unusual for a rush hour. We started to be suspicious when we noticed policemen directing the traffic. And it fully dawned on us, when one of them stopped us saying the city center is closed. Uhm…ok. So how are we going to get to our hotel? The helpful policeman brainstormed a different route with the words: “…just go as far as you can. When you cannot drive any longer, take a beer, wait and watch.”
And so we did. We saw crowds of people dressed up in their best clothes waiting for a procession to pass. We saw a corridor made of men dressed in black hooded robes. We saw a shrine lit with candles passing through on its way to the cathedral. We got a waffle, made some pictures, contemplated about the magic of this moment, and returned to the hotel once the crowd passed. And all that thanks to a hotel key card, that took us through several police barriers like a VIP ticket.
