Ooh, they’re cheering outside!

Ooh, the brass band is playing!

Ooh, the drums are drumming!

Ooh, they’re singing!

Repeat, for seven hours.

Actually, the singing is novel. And that did just happen as I was typing it. Otherwise, no need for actual live blogging–you get the idea. And it will go on till Sunday.

I’m in Granada now. We started running across Semana Santa events a few days back, as we’ve moved to progressively larger towns, and now the big city. In each case, the bands have gotten tighter, the statues have gotten more humongous and the crowds have gotten more giddy and festive, rather than somber. They’ve also gotten monstrous, to the point where we could not get home tonight for a couple of hours because we happened to be on the wrong side of a procession.

It’s like New Year’s Eve, Halloween and the Fourth of July all mixed together. (Not for the fireworks–just lots of brass bands.)

Oh, also, for us Americans, toss in a smidge of a good old-fashioned lynching, what with all the pointy hoods and the fires blazing. I did a little research today, and no one seems to know why the KKK dress up like Catholic penitents, when they hate Catholics so much. And now they’ve gone and given a whole country an image problem. Maybe the Spanish can get together with the Navajo and lament the misuse of the swastika as well.

And can I just emphasize the not-somber factor? I was surprised by this. I’m used to New Mexico, where, aside from the occasional clown at a pueblo dance, religious ceremony is Some Serious Shit. No teenagers are taking pictures of their friends with their cell phones in NM, and damn sure no one’s ducking out of their band duties to have a glass of wine at the nearest bar.

Oooh, they’re cheering outside again. This happens whenever the team carrying the statue successfully negotiates a curve in the street. This involves a great deal of shuffling in place–like a 200-point K-turn.

Every time I see them do it (and you can only see their feet under the whole howda-like construction upon which the Virgin Mary or Christ is resplendent), I have flashbacks to all the times I had to turn the car around in tiny villages in the past two weeks. I may not be Catholic, but I am with them in spirit.

Oooh, there are some woodwinds chiming in. That’s new.

What else? Well, the guys in the hoods are supposed to be the penitents, but they’re followed by this enormous crew of women in very glam black gowns and long lace mantillas and sleek black stockings…and tippy little pointy high heels. Dudes might be hoisting a wooden cross–but walking stop-and-go, museum-style for seven hours in stilettos? Those women probably just have to cut their feet off at the end of the night and start fresh. I hope they’re in religious ecstasy.

OK, totally dazed by lack of sleep. Putting my earplugs in and calling it a night, at the weak-ass hour of 1 a.m. There will be plenty more opportunities. Somehow, just now, I am not singing “I Love a Parade.”

And, before I could get to the earplugs, the street… I was about to type ‘has gone completely quiet.’ But no–there’s the brass band again. Nighty-night. Tomorrow I try to figure out whether any of the tourist attractions I need to research will actually be open.