Seville in Holy Week, and the brotherhoods that carry the floats

Holy Week in Seville begins with a sound before it begins with a sight: a muffled drum somewhere down a narrow street, then the shuffle of hundreds of feet keeping time beneath a float that seems to move on its own. The float is carrying a carved and dressed figure of Christ or the Virgin, lit by candles and banked with flowers, and it is so heavy that the men underneath can only move it a few steps at a time. Then it stops, the crowd goes quiet, and somebody on a balcony begins to sing.

In 2027 Semana Santa runs from Palm Sunday, 21 March, to Easter Sunday, 28 March. Easter moves with the moon, so the week falls in March in some years and April in others.

The brotherhoods and their floats

The processions belong to the hermandades and cofradías, the religious brotherhoods attached to the city's parish churches, and there are more than sixty of them. Each one leaves its own church on its own day, walks to the cathedral by way of a fixed route through the centre, the Carrera Oficial, and then walks home again. For some brotherhoods the round trip takes the best part of twelve hours.

A procession has a shape you soon learn to read. First comes a cross, then the long double file of nazarenos, the penitents in robes and tall pointed hoods, carrying candles or wooden crosses. They walk in silence, and they are anonymous on purpose. Then comes the paso, the float, and it is the paso that people have been waiting for.

Most brotherhoods carry two: one with a scene from the Passion, and one with their Virgin under a canopy, her mantle trailing behind. Neither is pushed or wheeled. Both are carried by costaleros, men hidden underneath the float, bearing it on their shoulders and necks. They cannot see where they are going. A foreman, the capataz, walks in front, calls instructions and knocks on the front of the float to set them going, and the whole structure lifts and sways forward in time with the band. When a float turns a tight corner without touching a wall, the crowd applauds; when it stops beneath a balcony and somebody sings a saeta, an unaccompanied prayer in the flamenco style, nobody moves until the last note has gone.

The Madrugá

The heart of the week is the night between Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, the Madrugá, when the most venerated images in the city go out after midnight and walk until the following afternoon. El Silencio processes in silence, as its name says. El Gran Poder's Christ, bowed under his cross, draws a crowd that is mostly local and very quiet. The Macarena's Virgin, from the north of the old city, is greeted all the way with shouts of affection. It is worth staying up for one of them, in a side street rather than on the official route, where the chairs are reserved and the view is often worse.

A few practical things are worth knowing. Seville is busy all week, and hotels fill early; most brotherhoods publish their routes and times in advance, and the local newspapers print the timetable, so you can plan to meet a procession rather than chase it. Wear comfortable shoes. The crowds are good-humoured and dense, and it is not unusual to be stuck on one side of a procession for an hour. Restaurants stay open late, which is just as well, because nothing happens on time.

It is also, for all its music and flowers, a week of mourning. People dress up, children collect wax from the candles in balls, and the bars are full, but when a float passes most heads are bare and many people are praying. A visitor is welcome, and the right manner is the one you would bring to any church: quiet when it is quiet, no flash, and no stepping through the line of nazarenos to get to the other side.

Andalucía in spring around it

Holy Week is the most crowded week of Seville's year, and there is a good case for seeing the processions for a night or two and the rest of Andalucía either side. Spring is the season for it anyway: the orange trees are in blossom in the courtyards, the countryside is green, and the heat of summer has not yet arrived.

Explore's seven-night Highlights of Andalucia joins Granada and Cordoba to Seville by way of the Sierra de Aracena, the hill villages of Castaño del Robledo, Alájar and Galaroza in the far west of the region. It runs from March to June and again in the autumn, which makes it one of the few holidays here with departures in March.

Explore's nine-night Moorish Andalucia takes a longer loop: from Malaga to Ronda and into the Sierra de Grazalema Natural Park, with Zahara and Grazalema, then Seville, Córdoba, Cabra and finally Granada. Its departures start in April. Neither trip is built around Holy Week, so if you want to see the processions, check the dates against the year's calendar before you book, or plan to arrive in Seville a few days early on your own.

If you can only manage one evening, choose a weekday early in the week, when the crowds are thinner, and find a narrow street on the route. Wait for the drum. The float will come round the corner at walking pace, a little at a time, carried by people you will never see.