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International Tourist Sight
The Semana Santa (Holy Week) celebrations in Valladolid have been declared of international touristic interest. They combine, as do the celebrations of other cities of the region with deep courtesan and cultural roots, influences from two eras: the Semana Santa that dates back to the 15th century, and the reorganisation of 1920 that took place under the archbishop Gandásegui and the writers Cossío, Agapito and Revilla, when remains from the Sayon fraternity, evidence of historic events, were found in the basement of what was then the Museo Provincial de Bellas Artes (Provincial Museum of Fine Arts) in the Palacio de Santa Cruz. The images of Christ and the Virgin were in the temples and have been better cared for and preserved, as they are cult images. The historic Semana Santa of the twenties was the consequence of a catastrophe that is still preserved by art. To reunite the pieces of this divine puzzle was a passionate adventure, and one which still engages much research into the art of religious images.
On Palm Sunday there is the float of La Borriquilla, made up of seven small figures that are unique in Castilla y León in being preserved from the 16th century, made from paper, glued canvas, and with the hand and faces carved in wood.
The main day of the celebrations in Valladolid is Good Friday. In the morning in the Plaza Mayor the Sermón de las Siete Palabras (Sermon of Seven Words) is held, after being announced in verse at different points around the city by a group of fraternity members on horseback. In the afternoon, in a procession of floats with thousands of fraternity members that covers the peripheries of the old city, there are old-style theatrical representations of the most significant scenes of the Passion: the supper with the apostles, the prayer in the garden, the arrest, the Ecce Homo, the flogging, the preparations for the crucifixion, the seven words spoken by Christ on the cross, on seven floats, the death on the cross and Christ's descent from the cross, the recumbent figure, the body in the tomb and the Virgin in mourning. The Procesión General de la Pasión is made up of 31 floats, most of them constructed in the 16th and 17th centuries, and organised by the 19 penitential fraternities. Together they form an authentic street museum.
The oldest and one of the largest of these floats represents the putting up of the cross, and was made in the workshop of Francisco de Rincón in 1604. it is strange to think that Cervantes, who lived in Valladolid, could have seen the float taking part in the procession for the very first time, one year before Don Quijote was published. Today it can be seen in the Museo Nacional de Escultura (National Museum of Sculpture), a museum unequalled in all the world, and in the city's streets during Semana Santa.
One moment that makes us aware of the strange and the peculiar in Valladolid is when the float of the Virgen de las Angustias, which will have closed the Procesión de La Pasión, enters its temple and everybody sings the Salve Popular (popular worship), accompanied by all the musical bands playing the national hymn.
In Villavicencio de los Caballeros, a village close to Medina de Rioseco, on Maundy Thursday there is a very original celebration of the Descendimiento. Members of the fraternity of la Venerable Orden Tercera de San Francisco lower the image of Christ from its place in the church of Santa María, in a ritual which is liturgical but above all traditional and popular, and follows the guidelines dictated in 1736. On this day the country village is filled to overflowing with all the visitors that the events attracts.
On Resurrection Sunday in the town of Peñafiel, in the Plaza del Coso, the more than two-hundred-year-old tradition of the descent of the angel is celebrated, in which "the angel came down from the sky to take the black veil from the Virgin Mary and give her back her happiness". The event takes place in the silent witness of the town's beautiful castle.
