Pillars of Holy Week Processions Put Teamwork and Brawn on Display
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Version 0 of 1. SEVILLE, Spain — On a recent evening here, a group of 43 men shuffled back and forth as they carefully negotiated a tight street corner during a practice run carrying one of the heavy religious floats that get paraded around this city during its Holy Week celebrations. After finally clearing the corner, the men started walking again at a gentle but steady pace, their feet hitting the ground with the kind of precision normally displayed during a military parade. These men, known as the costaleros, are the hidden but indispensable pillars of the Easter celebrations that take place across Spain, but are particularly significant in Seville. While many of the costaleros are practicing Roman Catholics, their main assets are a strong neck and legs, as well as a commitment to team work, rather than religious fervor. “I believe the costaleros are not only the essential part of the Holy Week, but also the one with the strongest group identity and sense of sharing, because this is really like an intense team sport,” said Roberto Ruíz González, a historian who called himself an atheist and has been a costalero for 28 years. “Without the costaleros, there can simply be no Holy Week procession.” Until the early 1970s, the costaleros of Seville were mainly dockworkers, who got extra pay for lifting the floats during the processions. To this day, each costalero wears a coffee bag over his head, as a kind of protective headgear, like that which dockworkers once used (even if many are now replicas, rather than the actual thing). As the city’s river port activities declined, however, the number of dockworkers dwindled — to the point that the religious brotherhoods linked to the city’s churches started using volunteer members to carry the floats. Despite the lack of pay, the reputation of Seville’s Holy Week is such that men travel from across the southern region of Andalusia to join its religious brotherhoods as costaleros. Some even make it a family outing. “We already pretty much do everything together, so of course we also travel here together,” said Fernando Rodríguez Flores, 28, who has been a costalero for 11 years and stood beside his father, also called Fernando, who has 28 years of service as a costalero. They came for the evening from Écija, a town about 60 miles away, where they both work as bricklayers. A float can weigh as much as 5,400 pounds, like that carried by Luismi Fajardo, a local police officer who is one of the costaleros in the brotherhood of La Macarena and has a large bulge on his neck as a result of carrying the float for the past 28 years. Besides its heavy structure of metal and wooden beams, the float is weighed down by decorations that include several statues, sometimes depicting a whole scene from the Bible. On Mr. Fajardo’s float, Pontius Pilate washes his hands while Jesus is condemned to death. During the practice runs, the statues and other lavish ornaments are often replaced by concrete blocks to match their full weight. But however intense the training, the actual Holy Week procession is a lot more difficult, not only because of the extra responsibility of carrying precious statues along crowded streets, but also because the float is then draped in a heavy velvet cloth. Walking below it, the costaleros must breathe through small holes along the wooden edges of the platform. Some faint along the way. “It gets incredibly hot down there,” Mr. Fajardo said. “This is really more about resistance than pure strength, like what you need to run a long-distance race.” Indeed, the floats are carried on different routes linking the city’s churches to its cathedral, sometimes for as long as 14 hours. Along the route, two teams of costaleros generally work in relay. (The professional dockworkers used to cover the whole route with one team.) Some younger costaleros have elaborate religious tattoos, like José Manuel Gelo Delgado, 24, who has tattooed an image of the Virgin Mary on his right arm and one of Jesus on his left arm. “Being a costalero is a source of pride,” he said as he flexed his muscles. Minutes later, however, Juan José Gómez Sánchez, the man charged with leading the float of the Carretería brotherhood around Seville’s narrow streets, gave a pep talk to his costaleros during which he also urged them to “remain as discreet as possible.” When later asked about the tattoos, Mr. Gómez Sánchez frowned. “It’s become a fashion, and I don’t like anything that’s about showing off,” he said. “When I started, the only costaleros who had tattoos were those who had served in the Legion,” he added, in a reference to the elite military unit historically used by Spain in North Africa. Despite the physical strain of carrying a float, Mr. Gómez Sánchez said the number of volunteers was on the rise. This year, he had 40 applications to fill six vacancies. “It’s a unique chance to achieve something special together and also build real friendships,” he said. “You start as costaleros and end up going to each other’s birthdays and weddings.” Historically, the Holy Week celebrations also acted as a social leveler, putting on a par the different professional guilds linked to the religious brotherhoods and even African slaves, who were allowed to form their own Seville brotherhood, called “Los Negritos.” The processions, therefore, “transcend religion,” Mr. Ruíz González, the historian, argued. “They gave even excluded people like the slaves a chance to regain some sense of identity.” Nowadays, that drive toward social inclusion has also involved adding teams of women as costaleros in some Spanish cities. In Seville, however, the task of lifting the Holy Week floats remains an affair for men only, even if women have been allowed to join the processions as hooded penitents. “It’s not a question of discrimination,” Félix Mezquita Gayangos, the head of the Carretería brotherhood, said, “but a recognition that there are different roles in life, and that men and women aren’t the same and have different physical strengths.” |