The best way to get to know the inhabitants of Andalucía is through its festivities. If there is something in the Andalucían character that makes it stand out, it is their particular feeling for a feast and their way of celebrating it, their capacity of integration in the festivities and their collective enjoyment. More than 3,000 festivities are celebrated every year, from fairs and pilgrimages, carnivals, feasts of Moors and Christians and processions, in the nearly 800 localities in the region. There is hardly a free day during the year, and particularly much to choose from before and after harvest time. Each village has its own feast (a patron deity), apart from those that cover a wider area, either district, region or nation. Religious celebrations are particularly important in Andalucía, very spectacular artistically, and in general, inheritors of the Baroque.
Easter Week is the most outstanding celebration, with beautiful processions and images, specially of the Passion of Jesus Christ and the Virgin, that are taken through the streets amid popular devotion. The different fraternities responsible for these processions in each town represent the social and professional sectors. The most outstanding Easter week processions are those of Sevilla, Málaga and Córdoba, though the spectacle is tremendously interesting everywhere, and so are the more sober expressions of towns in the sierras.
Corpus Christi (feast of the body of Christ, Thursday after Trinity Sunday) is the only day of the year in which the consecrated host is exposed out of doors, in a solemn and brilliant procession. This celebration is general, the one in Granada standing out particularly for its beauty. This feast is an express representation of the old pact between Church and State, where all the civilian and religious representatives walk along the streets covered in a kind of sweet-smelling cyperus and flowers. Granada is widely decked out for Corpus Christi and there are, furthermore, other attractions and spectacles during this special commemoration of the institution of the Eucharist, celebrated for the first time in Liège in 1246, quickly adopted throughout Europe.
Most festivities have something to do with religion. Thus, throughout the year there are numerous pilgrimages (El Rocío, known all over the world, is the most multitudinous), dances held on the eve of a saint's day (verbenas), evening gathering (veladas), Crosses of May (Cruces de mayo - the ones in Córdoba are famous), and livestock and agricultural fairs (the April Fair in Sevilla is another example). The stars in all these celebrations are the people and the town, in the main square, main street, or a specially chosen site. Dancing and singing, the dresses and decorations, the lighting and contests, and each area's typical dishes are the fundamental elements of the feast.
Towards the end of May, El Rocio pilgrimage each year assembles nearly one million people in a small hamlet in the Guadalquivir marshes where, since 1280 an image of Virgen del Rocio (Our Lady of the Dew) has been venerated. Pilgrims on foot, on horseback or in carts and from all over Spain, transform the scenery of the area into a landscape full of colour and animation. Another of the famous pilgrimages in Andalucía takes place over the last weekend in April - Virgen de la Cabeza (Our Lady of the Head) in Andújar, province of Jaén. At this celebration that goes back to the 13th century, half a million people assemble to see the Virgin being taken in procession on the shoulders of the faithful for 30 kms.
Other interesting pilgrimages are, for example, Virgen de Setefilla at Lora del Rio in the province of Sevilla, the one celebrated at Cabra, province of Córdoba by gypsies to the hermitage of Santa María or that of El Cristo del Paño (Christ of the Cloth) at Moclín in the province of Granada.
Other religious festivities full of great beauty and tourist interest are those celebrated at the seaside in Andalucía, called the marine processions. At the pilgrimage of La Virgen del Mar (Our lady of the Sea) patroness of Almería, the image is taken in a carriage decorated with flowers from its church to the hermitage and the culminating point is when she is taken from the lighthouse to the dock by boat. But it is on July 16th, feast of La Virgen del Carmen, patroness of sailors, when all localities on the coast take out their images in procession on the sea among decorated boats of all sorts among the blowing of horns accompanies sometimes by fireworks. Estepona is worth a visit for Virgen del Carmen