Semana Santa: Santiago de Compostela

Semana Santa technically means Holy Week, but refers to the week and a half vacation I had starting the Thursday before Easter and lasting through the next week.

For the first Friday through Monday I was in Santiago de Compostela in Galicia. The cathedral in Santiago is where the remains of St. James are kept. So, there is a pilgrimage leading to Santiago called El Camino. There are several different routes, the most popular one beginning in France. You can read more about El Camino here. It was really cool to be in the plaza in front of the cathedral and see people arriving after having walked for weeks to get there.

This is the symbol of El Camino.
It's also found in Oviedo because Oviedo is on the route.

Something unique that occurs in Spain during Holy Week are the processions. These oftentimes include what look like KKK uniforms, but these processions have been going on for hundreds of years long before the KKK. I tried to attend a few processions in Santiago, but many were canceled due to rain. I did catch one luckily, but their outfits didn't include the hoods.

I think this one was kind of cheating because it was on wheels, they didn't carry it.

Both men and women participated and you can kind of
see in the picture that some of them were barefoot.

Some of them carried the metal staffs that were used to
prop the float up when they stopped.

Daylight savings time began on Easter in Spain, I believe 3 weeks after in the United States. Which resulted in me missing the main Easter Mass in the cathedral because my little track phone doesn't change time automatically and I forgot the time switched.

Some of the cool things I saw in Santiago included the cathedral, an exhibit of more than 200 varieties of Camelia, the flower of Galicia, and the cathedral museum.

The cathedral

Double organ!

The altar

Camelias

Stay tuned for Part II when I head to Madrid!