In the Navarrese and Western society, Holy Week, like any extraordinary event, brought with it a distancing and contrast with respect to the daily routine, with special connotations linked to the commemoration of the Passion of Christ. Its components have been changing as in any festival, characterized by being a dynamic phenomenon. Some customs endure, others have reappeared, have been created or recreated with the passage of time. In general and apparently, Holy Week has been secularized, becoming more playful, identitarian and supralocal, at the same time that it has become more spectacular and less ritual.

The processions are the element that has survived the profound changes experienced by society for more than a century. On the great monuments of Holy Thursday, we have already dealt recently in this same newspaper (April 2, 2015), pointing out their importance as authentic ephemeral architectures painted with arches in perspective, often enriched with images of the Passion of Christ, soldiers and Eucharistic prefigurations. The same Thursday also acquired great importance the sermon of the mandate and the washing of the apostles. These used to be needy or poor people from some charitable institution. In the cathedral of Pamplona, they were dressed in Spanish capes and starched white crowns, reminiscent of the traditional costumes.

Other secular traditions, such as the darkness or the theatricalization of the Descent from the Cross, have almost completely disappeared, leaving only documentary evidence of their once great success in terms of participation.

The Darkness

With this denomination were popularized, until the last liturgical reform, the matins and lauds of the last three days of Holy Week, in which the psalms, antiphons and responsories were sung in the afternoon of the previous day, those of Thursday in the afternoon of Wednesday, those of Friday in the afternoon of Thursday and those of Saturday in the afternoon of Friday. The particularity of the ceremony was that it was carried out with the temples practically in darkness, illuminated with six candles on the altar presided by a veiled Crucifix and another fifteen candles arranged in an enormous candelabra of staggered form, seven on each side and one of greater size in the center. At different moments of the rite, the candles were extinguished as the psalmody progressed, both those of the altar and those of the tenebrary, leaving only the one in the center, called Mary, lit.

The intensity of the act was growing and at the end, after all the candles had been extinguished little by little, the lighted Mary candle was removed, hiding it behind the altar to hide it from the people. At the end of the chanting of the Miserere, performed with solemnity, the ritual prescribed a little noise, while an acolyte took out the Mary candle.

Some preserved tenebraries, such as the eighteenth-century one in the cathedral of Pamplona, have become silent witnesses of that function to which people flocked for several reasons. In the first place, because that ceremony was destined to prepare and favor internally and externally the report of the death of Christ. But also for its symbolism and particularly that of the light, for the sung texts and the noise, elements that acted on the attendees provoking them sensorially. The darkness and the small noise that became a real din in many cases, unnerved the people in a very singular way. The fifteen candles of the tenebrarium represented the eleven apostles who had persevered -all except Judas-, the three Marys and the Virgin, that is to say, those who accompanied Jesus. The triangle itself symbolized the Holy Trinity, while the tallest candle, called the Mary candle, evoked the Virgin, as the only one who believed in the Resurrection, although others interpret it as a symbol of Christ. The gradual extinction of the lights would be related to the waning faith of the apostles and disciples.

In the cathedral of Pamplona, the darkness was very long and the attendance was enormous, partly because of the music performed, with premieres and revivals of such famous melodies as Eslava's Miserere. In 1897, 10,000 people gathered at the Holy Thursday Tinieblas. Alejandro Aranda has studied the whole development of the function and refers as one of its high points, the clattering of rattles and rattles that the children made sound, in memory of the roar made by the soldiers in the arrest of Christ and the terrible earthquake that occurred at his death. In some towns like Fitero, the earthquake became a real spectacle when some gunpowder devices were fired from the ambulatory of the church.

Mourning in the temples and penitents in the streets

As many people will still remember, the altarpieces with their sculptures and paintings remained covered, inside the temples, from the fifth Sunday of Lent onwards, with large purple or black curtains. The impression of the veiled images was, during Passion Week at least, overwhelming. The veils were generally poor fabrics, although some seem to have been richly woven, such as the veil that covered the main altarpiece of the cathedral of Pamplona, which, by the way, was requested by Higinio Sanz Sola, parish priest of Leache, in 1942.

No less emotion caused in the street the penitents who joined the processions with all subject of torments and scourges. In the constitutions of some confraternities the penitences of the brothers were stipulated. In Cascante, in 1588, it is about the "brothers of discipline and of light" in the procession of the brotherhood of the Soledad, which departed from the convent of the Mínimos.

In 1770, in tune with enlightened political measures and Jansenist influence, the bishop of Pamplona Juan Lorenzo Irigoyen y Dutari prohibited the disciplinantes to go in the processions half-naked, only wearing underpants, which he considered as "an insufferable abuse in the shameful and indecent nudity". In the document he attacks the false penitents who paraded under such a name "muddy, asperous and in other very improper ways", whom he judges to be "vain and reprehensible presumption". The bishop of Baztanes saw all this as ridiculous and a hindrance to true devotion, as well as constituting a "scandal and spiritual ruin in the countless number of people of both sexes who .... watch with no little attention these indecent spectacles .... well able to encourage malice, and open their eyes to the same innocence". Nor did he approve of "the annoying and continuous clattering of chains, bars and other actions". Likewise, it described the disciplinantes as reckless "because of the imminent risk to which they expose themselves of losing their lives" or becoming useless for the work, harming their families. It ended by prohibiting the processions "with discipline of blood, bars, swords, chains or other similar things, allowing only dry disciplines and without effusion of blood, and the penance of carrying a cross on the shoulder, or walking with arms outstretched, or in some decent and edifying form of the faithful, as long as they walk dressed and with their flesh covered, except only for some opening or narrow and precise division of the shirt in the back, which is allowed to those who are to be disciplined".

Descent of Christ

The function of the Descent of Christ from the Cross took place in the afternoon of Good Friday in many parishes and convents, especially of Franciscans and Poor Clares. Of that theatricalization we have an eloquent testimony in the images of Christs articulated in their arms, at the height of the shoulders, to make possible their inclusion, as one more character, in the complicated ceremonial-liturgical-theatrical of the mentioned representation. Among the images preserved, those of Tudela, Corella, Fitero, Los Arcos, Arguedas, Valtierra, Milagro and Villafranca stand out.

The origins of this act date back to the Age average and we have documentary evidence of its celebration in Cintruénigo, Estella (brotherhood of the Vera Cruz), Lumbier (private devotees), Tafalla (brotherhood of the Vera Cruz and Descendimiento), Corella (until 1806), Los Arcos (until 1833), Fitero (until a century ago), Tudela (until 1920) and Cascante (until 1930). In Los Arcos and Fitero the ceremony has been recovered in recent years, in the afternoon of Good Friday.

In Tudela we have the written testimony of José Branet, member of the clergy French exile, who spent the Holy Week of 1798 in the capital of La Ribera. In recounting the ceremony of the Descent from the Cross of the Franciscans, he writes: "A Christ nailed to a large cross is placed beforehand in the presbytery of the church and, a short distance away, the image of the Virgin covered with a long black veil. The preacher, from the top of the pulpit, encourages the listeners, with pathetic reasoning to come to the aid of this mother of sorrows. Then, four, dressed in albs, climb up to the cross by means of ladders and then, with the help of hammers, tongs and linen, remove successively, as the preacher indicates it in his speech, the registration of the cross, the crown of thorns, then they pull out the nails of the hands and feet and go to present everything, piece by piece, to the Blessed Virgin, who wipes her tears with a beautiful white handkerchief. Finally, with the linens, they slowly and cautiously lower the body of Jesus, whose limbs, by means of springs, can take the desired attitude. When they have lowered it, they place it in a coffin adorned with black gauze, placed under a canopy, also black, which is carried in procession and they proceed to the burial of the body of Jesus Christ to the mournful singing of the Miserere. This ceremony would be very touching if the preacher knew how to take advantage of it and suggest the feelings that it should naturally inspire". In synthesis, we find actors, men and images, who at the preacher's orders, are representing the passage with all care and, from agreement with a ritual care, previously established. At the end of the report, Branet highlights the preacher's lack of talent to make the most of this representation of the passion.

Variants and invariants in processions

The processions have also undergone changes over time. Thus, those of Maundy Thursday gave way to those of Good Friday, despite the popularity and even the official nature of the former. In Tudela, the Thursday procession started from the convent of La Merced and was the official one attended by the authorities and the guilds. In Pamplona, the one on Friday was gaining notoriety throughout the 18th century.

Passages such as those of death -represented by a painted or sculpted skeleton- that opened the parades have hardly been preserved. In this regard, we can only recall what happened in Tudela, when its presence was introduced. Procedural documentation from 1623, reminds us that the sculptor Juan de Gurrea was involved in a macabre lawsuit that the ecclesiastical authority brought against Francisco de Aras who, wishing that in the procession of the Soledad "the insignia of the burial of Christ, as in Seville, Zaragoza and other large cities, with great Building of the faithful....", he took the corpse of a Frenchman who had died in the hospital to save the more than thirty ducats it would have cost to make a wooden skeleton. The aforementioned Francisco de Aras called "Juan de Gurrea who is the one who had to understand how to make the skeleton.... took him to see the one from Zaragoza so that he could do it according to the one from Zaragoza and he took from this (from the skeleton of the Frenchman) all that was necessary and the said Juan de Gurrea did it with him and the skeleton is done". Everything ended with a condemnation to those responsible, ordering to bury the remains of the Frenchman and to apply suffrages for his eternal rest.

In Pamplona, it is necessary to distinguish a before and an after in the concept of parade and in its development with the foundation of the Brotherhood of the Passion in 1887. Steps, organization, spirituality, allegorical and biblical groups and the meaning of the event were transformed from that date onwards for the sake of something more inwardly lived and an exclusively religious catechesis .

In Tudela, the nineteenth-century processional order was as follows: picket of the Civil Guard, standard of death with the registration "Nemini parco" (I forgive no one), Abraham and Isaac, Moses and Aaron, the twelve tribes of Israel, entrance triumphant of Jesus in Jerusalem, passage of the Prayer in the Garden, standard of repentance of St. Peter, passage of Christ at the Column, passage of the Coronation of Thorns, passage of the Cross on the shoulders preceded by criers with drums and clarions, passage of the Veronica, the Seven Words carried by children, the Passage of the Crucified Christ, the Passage of Saint John the Evangelist, the Passage of Saint Mary Magdalene, the Passage of the Pietà, the Sibyls represented by twelve girls with their inscriptions, the veil of the temple together with girls dressed in the "arma Christi", the coffin or bed of the Holy Sepulcher, the presidency, the cathedral music chapel singing the "Miserere" and the Passage of the Virgin "in her bitter Solitude". This last detail of leaving the Virgin alone, after the authorities and the Band of Music was observed in other towns such as Cintruénigo.

The saetillas of yesteryear gave way to the recited or sung Credo and to popular melodies and these, in turn, would be replaced, in the large towns and cities, by processional marches interpreted by music bands and, more recently, by drums, due to Aragonese influence. The saetas had already been prohibited by the city council of Pamplona in 1750, because "the boys who usually go under the pasos singing saetillas of the Passion of the Lord in the processions of Holy Thursday and Good Friday, disturb the devotion, silence and seriousness of the procession".