When I first arrived to Spain I visited the Casino. I honestly thought we were going gambling when we were searching for it, but it is not that kind of casino. The Casino used to be a gentlemen’s club, and still kind of is. Men can purchase memberships and use the facilities at the Casino, which basically include reading rooms, game rooms, and rooms to drink. Back in the day the Casino was the most popular meeting spot for men, and women were absolutely not allowed to enter. Women are now allowed to enter, and they have turned the Casino into a museum (except for the small area that remains a gentlemen’s club). We did a self guided tour through it with personal speakers. It is extremely beautiful in there. There are various rooms that you enter and learn about which are numbered off. The rooms contain art, sculptures, and some original architecture. The sculptures in there are built onto platforms. We learned that the Casino holds the “floats” that are used for Semana Santa (Holy Week). This past couple weeks before and during Easter there has been celebrations, and I got to see the “floats” be paraded proudly through the streets of Murcia for Semana Santa.
Over 14 days processions were held every day. Men carry these extremely heavy floats across the city for hours, and the whole city is out watching. Women and children are also dressed who are participating in the processions, and even the people sitting outside watching are dressed in their Sunday best. The plain and simple history behind this huge celebration is the commemoration of the death of Christ.
The people dressed up are stuffed with candy. The children who are watching with their families bring bags, it is like their version of Halloween, but it lasts almost two weeks! Lucky, lucky kids. That is a lot of possible candy collection by the end of it! A year supply, for sure.
Semana Santa was very interesting to watch, and the floats were beautiful. It was warming to see the community coming together to celebrate something they all support so strongly.
I think cultural tourism is a huge part of Spain's tourism income. Durring these festivities I noticed a lot of people speaking different languages all around, clearly who have travelled to view the festivities. Spain has a lot of celebrations commemorating their culture throughout the year, so their are lots of opportunities for people to come and experience Spanish culture year round.
The following are some pictures that my mom took while she was here, on the first day of the celebrations. Every day they were dressed in different colours. On Easter they were dressed in white.
I couldn't find anything on the internet, but a lot of these people grabbed their faces like the picture above. I thought it was to be able to see but then I saw a statue in Murcia of a man dressed in this costume and he was doing the same thing. So I think the face grabbing has some sort of cultural signifigance.
One of the floats, and the men carrying it. All of these men seemed to be in extreme pain carrying these floats. But I think it is looked at as an honour to be one of the people carrying it. Some of these processions last for hours and some men walk it barefoot.
It seemed like there were millions of people in the streets.
There were two priests who stood outside the Cathedral in a balcone everyday for the entire procession.
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