Easter Week is Seville's main fiesta. It's a celebration which reaches levels of aesthetic and spiritual intensity that make it unique among all Easter Week celebrations.

From Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday, nearly sixty confraternities take to the streets to bring the Passion and Death of Christ to life. There is an old tradition of singing a special flamenco style of threnody called saeta as the processions of the confraternities pass various points along the route.

Easter Week in Seville is considered an art form in itself, as well as being the manifestation of a profound spiritual feeling. It is a complex and sometimes paradoxical phenomenon. It is a truly popular experience in which everybody takes part, without any class distinctions. And it is at the same time religious and artistic, serious and joyful, simple and luxuriant.

Easter Week in Seville is not only a Catholic fiesta going back over four hundred years, but the synthesis of a whole culture centred on sensual pleasure and the essentials of being human.

Times to watch

On arriving in Seville during Easter Week, your first step is simple: let yourself be seduced by your senses, and breathe in the subtle aroma which permeates the city air. It is a mixture of a unique kind of incense, with touches of caramel, and the scent of orange blossom.

It is easy to be overwhelmed by the heartfelt and profound singing of a saeta or the silence of crowds which seem flow down the streets like rivers, always leading us on to a procession, or the moment when a float is leaving or entering a church.

If you want to see the figures and processions better you should look for places away from the official route, which is where all the confraternities have to pass on their way to the Cathedral. The feeble light of the candles will highlight the baroque style of some of the extremely expressive convulsed images, such as the "Cachorro", considered by many to be a masterpiece of the representation of Christ's agony. His day, Good Friday, together with Easter Saturday, are probably the best to enjoy Seville. Then, after the huge crowds of the "madrugá" (the small hours), the days are more relaxed, but they are still full of emotional moments, and of a unique but ephemeral art.

And in the province...

In the province of Seville, special mention should be made of the Easter week celebrations in Alcalá de Guadaíra, Alcalá del Río, Carmona, Morón de la Frontera, Coria del Río, Utrera, Écija, Marchena, Estepa, Osuna, Guadalcanal, La Roda de Andalucía and Las Cabezas de San Juan .

They are all designated as Fiestas of Tourist Interest, which gives you an idea of their value and beauty.

Download here the Guía de la Semana Santa de la provincia de Sevilla