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Here we go again…
And no, they are not copying the KKK … it’s the other way round. Though to date nobody has ever been able to tell me the origins of these penitent costumes, other than to say that it would be immodest for a penitent to show their face. So okay, that explains the hood, but not the pointy hat thang.
Yesterday was the beginning of Semana Santa – Palm Sunday. People thronged to Sevilla from the suburbs and villages all decked out in their best Palm Sunday attire. My eyes! I took a few pics but decided it would be too cruel to post them. And now for the next seven days I shall be a prisoner in my apartment (stone’s throw from the Cathedral). Seriously no way of getting out my front door most of the time. What fun!
casa azahar 
“took a few pics but decided it would be too cruel to post them.”
Oh… Pleaseeeeee!
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You know what they say about men with big hats….
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I should know more about this, because I feel about the Dominican Inquisition kind of the same way Southerners feel about the Civil War — they were going after about anyone I could have identified with in that era — and the pointy hat was, if I remember right, inflicted on those being marched to the stake. Why a pointy hat like that was used for this purpose, though, I forget.
One thinks of the dunce cap, also imposed as a sign of shame for “wrong thinking”; probably a permutation.
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There are both conehead and floppy versions of the pointy hood here. The nazarenos who carry the long candles have the cardboard cone in their hoods, and the penitentes carrying crosses over their shoulders don’t. I don’t know if this has any significance other than it would be damned hard keeping the cone on and carrying the cross.
There is a tradition here of kids collecting balls of multi-coloured wax off the various candles – they’ll run up to a nazareno during a procession and get them to drip wax onto the ever growing ball. Many also carry sweets in their pockets to give to the children.
Tonight the Santa Cruz procession passes by my house. On its way home from the cathedral (around 1.30 am) it always stops directly in front of my bedroom balconies and plays the most beautiful of all the Semana Santa “marchas”.
I remember last year lying in my bed listening to this and wondering if I would ever hear it again…
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So I DID hear it again, and not only that, I made this video of it.
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