To be honest, I do not remember his name though he always remembers mine and gives me the honorific don.
We stood there, between inside and outside, and chatted for a while,
A committed and practicing Catholic, he just returning from a very full day of processions.
It was Good Friday when the city remembers and relives the death of Jesus, important processions take place and he participated in several of them and had one more Friday night.
I do not know what they are and can only guess.
We spoke about the intense spirituality of the processions, with their sacrifices and dedication.
However, he also reminded me that there are people, many possibly, who only participate to look good to fellows and family. Their inner devotion is less.
That night he still had processions to be part of. He was coming home to rest for a bit and eat something before returning to his obligations.
Four different procession were scheduled to come together as part of the “entierro” the burial of Jesus’ body. A Fraternity located in the Con-Cathedral, one of the Bishop’s two seats, the other, older seat, is located in nearby Orihuela, is key to this ritual burial.
One of their main images is of the body of Christ, laid out. They carry this image through the streets, and this is the body that is ritually laid to rest, while the other processions come together with them.
After this, unlike in other Spanish cities, Saturday people rest while the body of Christ lays in the tomb and on Sunday it resumes again with the resurrection of the Christ.
Maybe I am mistaken, but as I have read about the various Fraternities and Brotherhoods, as well as the processions I see ebbs and flow.
It seems we are in a period that in Spanish would be called auge, when Holy week with its processions is surging.
If so, that would require an explanation which I am lacking.
The arc seems to be as follows. In 1931, throughout Spain churches, monasteries and convents broke out in flames, their sacred objects consumed.
This changed after the Civil War that stemmed from a military uprising against the democratic republic and the installation of a Right wing dictatorship that ensued.
As a result, Fraternities and Brotherhoods were able to reorganize themselves in the 1940s.
In 1940, the year after the surrender of Republican leaders, and after the mass execution of leftists, a Centro Católico, a Catholic Center, was formed in the city of Alicante and located in the central Rambla de Núñez Méndez.
It is said to have “brought together all the social classes of Alicante” although following that statement they emphasize the professional classes—lawyers, doctors, engineers, executives, government employees, merchants and so on. At the end of the list they include workers.
Despite the appearance of focusing on formal, bourgeois society that idea of bringing all of society together, creating a whole out of disparate groups where there had been war, is important to them.
Their history insists that there was “no discrimination at all. The only common denominator was that the [members] were practicing Catholics].*
From this Center on 1941 came the Hermandad de Nuestro Padre Jesús y Santo Sepulcro de Alicante which first processed in 1943.
It is located in the Con-Cathedral, a building which itself represents the Church’s hierarchy as encompassing all parishes in its part of the diocese.
Unsurprisingly, many important people are members of the Brotherhood, both men and women.
Though new, it built on antecedent processions and organizations going back to the 1600s with all the historical ups and downs of complex centuries in a port on the Mediterranean coast.
My impression is that in the 1970s, after then end of the dictatorship, in the flourishing of secularism, fellowships and brotherhoods entered into a bit of a decline.
They have recovered and reclaimed position recently, it looks like. I say this, but really it needs to be documented and not just asserted.
In line with the Hermandad de Nuestro Padre Jesús y Santo Sepulcro de Alicante social claims to importance, it control sthe key event of Good Friday, the burial of Jesus, something which may be parodied in Carnaval when the Sardine is paraded in Alicante, and subsequently buried, i.e. burned though Jesus is not burned.
This marks a kind of limit, I suspect to the idea and culture of the cremá, the burning as ritually important in Alicante, especially in the upcoming hogueras, bonfires, in the feast of San Juan.
In the newspaper Información , Lydia Ferrandiz (26 March, 2026) states the importance of this Fraternity as follows.
”From its origins, this Brotherhood has been the custodian of the most solemn moment of the passion of Christ in the city as an important part of the funeral cortege of the Holy Burial with the Cristo yacente that symbolizes the death of the Lord.”
Ferrandiz continues to note that the ornate baroque float on which the image is ported was financed by the Ayuntamiento, the government of Alicante, and bears its coat of arms.
In its procession, it is joined by the significant Cofradía of Santa María, whose seat is in the Basilica of Santa María, the oldest Church in the city on the site of a former mosque in the Old City under the Castle.
It is entitled “Royal and Very Illustrious” as signs of its importance. Doña Sofía of Greece and Queen of Spain, the mother of King Felipe, is a member of the Cofradía it proudly notes.
As I finish this, it is Easter Sunday, also called Resurrection Sunday. It is warm and sunny as afternoon inevitably moves towards evening.
My forays into the Cofradías and Hermandades has shown me how important they are and how they have changed over time.
They have also shown how they connect with the hierarchy and social history of the city while also being means of living reproducing its reality.
These are probably just a beginning as I continue to live in Alicante.
* nuestropadrejesusalicante dot es slash historia-2 slash
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