Easter in the south is a curious event. Visiting the small town of Priego I was caught up in elaborate traditions involving spectacular processions, excessive conglomerations of people, and some surprising peculiarities.

The main focus was on the two processions on Easter Friday. In the first, detailed religious models were carried from the church to the Calvary, at the top of a steep hill above the township. The first two floats, of Jesus, Joseph and Mary together, and Mary alone with her candles, were carried by church members dressed in purple gowns and white headscarves. The final float depicted Jesus carrying a cross, and it was carried by anyone who wanted to – anyone dedicated enough to work their way into a tight, sweaty crowd to have the heavy float weigh on their shoulders. As a result, while Mary swayed gracefully above the synchronised footsteps of the robed weightlifters, Jesus twisted and rocked ungainfully, like a crowdsurfer in a moshpit.

The procession moved extraordinarily slowly, the float-bearers ambling along and pausing for a rest every few metres. It allowed us spectators to skip through the town’s narrow backstreets to see the floats pass by a couple of times. All up it took several hours for the Jesus to make it to the Calvary, by which time most of the township (including unlikely looking types sporting extraordinary mullets and faded Pantera t-shirts) was waiting with a dough chicken in hand.

I was starving. We’d stopped for a beer on the way to the Calvary, as you do, (standing in the street outside a bar, knocking back a bottle seemed a strange, gentrified version of the botellón,) but we had to wait for the bread to be blessed before we could eat.

Once the Jesus made it up the steep narrow whitewashed streets to the Calvary, his mechanical arm reached out to our outstretched hands and blessed the bread we held up. Finally we could tuck into our chickens cagando eggs, as one little kid described the symbolic food.

After lunch I was swept into the heaving crowd outside the church to see Jesus return from the Calvary and be put away. The plaza outside the church was packed with people, and when Jesus and his carriers stumbled in the place turned into a moshpit like I’ve only ever experienced before at the Big Day Out. Once inside the church, a bunch of beans were untied from Jesus’ wrist and thrown into the crowd, and I manoeuvred my way out, trying to avoid having my ribcage crushed in the process.

We had a brief couple of hours’ repose, before the night time procession began. Terrified kids bawled their little eyes out as a large group of drummers, masked in black from head to toe, beat out a deep, ominous rhythm outside the church. The floats moved slowly past, showing Jesus’ body being taken down from the cross, Mary holding Jesus in her arms, Mary weeping, and Jesus in glass coffin. All those in the procession were cloaked in black, to symbolise their mourning.

In keeping with the general gravitas, the procession was largely in silence, apart from the drums, and the calls of “guapa” at the Virgin Mary. Personally, I’m not sure that I’d take too kindly to having guapa yelled at me if my son had just died. (Then again, who knows what’s going through the mind of someone who can get pregnant with her legs crossed).

But this brings me to people’s reactions to the processions. Everyone gushed about how beautiful the Virgin was, about how pretty the whole parade was – and they kept asking me what I thought about it all. Anxious not to offend, I affirmed that I thought it was all very spectacular and impressive, but I felt very strange saying that I thought it was beautiful. It seemed an odd reaction to have to a procession showing a dude dying on a cross – a procession that includes such details as nails displayed on a pillow. A peculiar thing to say to a woman whose son has just died. Any clues from Spaniards or Catholics out there who’ve made it this far without taking offence?

Other posts by Katie Llanos-Small