Semana Santa in Malaga, Tuesday Processions

This year we decided to extend our stay at Costa del Sol till after Easter because we wanted to see the famous Easter processions through the street of Malaga.This Tuesday there were 6 brotherhood presenting their Thrones (floats), but we were satisfied after two.

But first we had to visit some of Malaga´s best Tapas Bars and Restaurants. The above image is from Meson Iberico, where we started with a drink and a tapa before having an early dinner at El Refectories
Both places can be recommended.

I do not know what to write about the processions. I know too little about religious traditions in Spain, and the people I asked about the costumes could not give a good answer in English. Strange.

However, a lot of people was walking through streets of Malaga carrying religious "things" and symbols covered in different colours. The first "Brotherhood" this Tuesday was covered in purple.

Their great throne was of 2.000 kilo and was carried by 140 men. They moved in intervals of about 30 metre. The beauty of the golden throne was impressive.

The second brotherhood was covered in white and carried a huge throne of Virgin Maria.

All these thrones are made of gold and silver and rather spectacular.

If you are interested in more details about the Holly Week of Malaga , see here:

For more than 500 years, Holy Week of Málaga has been constantly present in the religious and popular feeling of people from Málaga. The Holy Week religious celebrations in Málaga are famous countrywide. Processions start on Palm Sunday and continue until Easter Sunday with the most dramatic and solemn on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. Images from the Passion on huge ornate "tronos" (floats or thrones) some weighing more than 5.000 kilos and carried by more than 250 members of Nuestra Señora de la Esperanza, shape the processions that go through the streets with penitents dressed in long purple robes, often with pointed hats, followed by women in black carrying candles. Drums and trumpets play solemn music and occasionally someone spontaneously sings a mournful saeta dedicated to the floats as it makes its way slowly round the streets. The Baroque taste of the religious brotherhoods and associations and the great amount of processional materials that they have been accumulating for centuries result in a street stage of exuberant art, full of color and majesty. Although many brotherhoods have been affected by the burning churches of 1931 and an important part of their heritage were destroyed as the trousseau, imagery, and others during the Spanish Civil War, in the years following it revival was slow but these recovered with much greater numbers. Also in the 1970s Cofradías nuevas began to be formed in the city, and some old brotherhoods, which were forgotten, are reorganized by young people as: Salud, Descendimiento, Monte Calvario and many more others to adapt to the changing times. Every year, the Passion Week in Málaga takes out to the streets a real festival perceptible by the five senses: processional thrones carrying images that sway all along the entire route, thousands of penitents lighting and giving colour with their candles and robes, processional marches, as well as aromas of incense and flowers filling the air as the processions pass by and thousands of people crowded to see and applaud their favorite tronos. Holy Week in Málaga is very different from that celebrated in other Andalusian or Spanish places, and those who go to Málaga for the first time will be surprised, as the Passion Week there is not lived with meditation and silence, but it is full of happiness, noise, cheer, spontaneous saetas (flamenco verses sung at the processions) and applause as the images pass by. Some tronos (floats) of Holy Week of Málaga are so huge that they must be housed in other places different from the churches, as they are taller than the entrance doors: real walking chapels of over 5,000 kilos carried by dozens of bearers. There are also military parades playing processional marches or singing their anthems along the route. All of this does not imply a lack of religiosity (nor the opposite though, since not few of the participants consider themselves lapsed catholics), but it is just the particular way that many people from Málaga live their faith, folkloric gustoes and/or feelings during the Holy Week. One of these military celebrations is that of the Spanish Legion, which parades the image of Christ of the Good Death together with the Legion's own military band and Honor guard on Maundy Thursday, very pouplar among tourists, locals, and military veterans.