PhD Program in Historical studies
The Holy Week of Malaga
The Cathedral of Malaga is the arrival point for all the Holy Week congregations that perform a penitential station from the church to which they belong (or the House of the Confraternity) to the city centre and the Cathedral. The Agrupación de Cofradías (the coordinating body that, since 1921, brings together congregations throughout Málaga) assures the scrupulous compliance with the route and the time allocated to each association. The current Plaza de la Constitución, however, is the place dedicated to the encounter between the Risen Christ and the Virgin Mary, which takes place on Easter Sunday.
The troubled history of Málaga´s artistic heritage, marked by destruction and remodeling, means that today the majority of Cofradías and tronos date back to the twentieth century and often also the oldest penitential associations use pageants from the twentieth century. For the same reasons, some confraternities born in the twentieth century have inherited tronos dating from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Despite the disasters of history, the faithful and tourists who attend the Holy Week in Malaga can still admire the parade of storied confraternities (sixteenth-eighteenth centuries), jealous guardians of statues built during the Baroque age (seventeenth-eighteenth century).
Each procession is opened by the Cruz Guía (Cross Guide), escorted by two brothers with lanterns. The parade of tronos is preceded by the passage of all the other insignia of the confraternity (the standard, the banner, the rule book, trumpets) and the acolytes, those who carry the candles and incense burners. A spectacle that really has few equals in Europe, it holds breath the whole city for more than a week, moving and enthralling thousands of worshipers and tourists.