Llerena

Easter Week in Llerena

The confraternities of the Llerenense Holy Week, of the oldest in Extremadura, have their origins in the XV century, knowing a time of great splendor after the Council of Trent, by the impulse that the same one transmitted to this type of associations in the frame of the counter-reformation. This impulse was increased in the case of Llerena by the desire of the ecclesiastical authorities, and especially the Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition, settled in this city, to eradicate definitively the illuminist sects so diffused in the same one during the previous century. In the 19th century, after the successive disentailments, which deprived them of most of their income and revenues, all the Confraternities of the city entered into a frank decline, almost disappearing, until the beginning of the present century, when a slow and progressive recovery began. Llerena in Holy Week flaunts its very rich artistic, cultural and gastronomic heritage, in a conjunction of traditions maintained in the bosom of the brotherhoods of rancid ancestry, insistently demonstrated in their titles and dignities; of living art, in contact with the people when the pasos parade through the streets, waste of festivity and color, fullness of smells and flavors that flood the senses. The Holy Week of Llerena begins on Palm Sunday with the traditional procession of the Triumphal Entry of Jesus into Jerusalem "la Burrita" where children, dressed as Hebrews, carrying palms and olive trees parade in procession through the historic center of the city. On Holy Wednesday, the very ancient Brotherhood of the Mother of God and the Poor, heir of the primitive Brotherhood of the Vera Cruz of this city, famous for its austerity and the beauty of its images and floats, makes its penitential procession. In the early morning of Holy Thursday takes place the procession "of the encounter", meeting of Our Father Jesus Nazarene, on the way to Calvary with Mary Most Holy of the Remedies accompanied by St. John in the midst of a shocking silence only broken by the roll of drums. Towards midday on Good Friday, the Santísimo Cristo de la Agonía and the Virgen de los Dolores make their penitential procession, a magnificent example of the very rich artistic heritage that the city has treasured over the centuries. The finishing touch of the Llerenense Holy Week will be the Brotherhood of Nazarenes of Nuestra Señora de la Soledad and the Santo Entierro, a display of richness and color typical of the Baroque aesthetics, although it will still be necessary to celebrate the resurrection of the dead.