Semana Santa in Seville and Málaga: what Holy Week is, and what it is not

The short answer

Semana Santa, Holy Week, is the week leading to Easter Sunday, and in Seville and Málaga it is carried by brotherhoods, whose coordinating bodies list their processions by day up to Easter Sunday.[10][4] A historical study published by Seville's Consejo General de Hermandades y Cofradías defines a Holy Week brotherhood as an association, in most cases of lay people only, that joins contemplation of the Passion and Death of Christ with public penance carried out during the procession, or "Estación de Penitencia", on one day of the week.[2]

So what you see in the street is not one parade. Each brotherhood goes out on its own day, and the coordinating bodies of both cities describe a shared stretch of route, the carrera oficial, that the processions pass along in an agreed order.[5][9] Seville's tourism office counted 71 brotherhoods processing between the Friday of Sorrows and Easter Sunday, 61 of them making their station at the cathedral.[8] That count comes from a page whose text describes 2023, so XTOUR treats it as history, not a current figure.

The brotherhoods' coordinating bodies, not the tourism offices, publish the routes and timetables and handle seats along the official route. XTOUR does not publish dates, routes, timetables or seat prices.

What a brotherhood is

The Consejo's study answers the question visitors ask first: why two words, hermandad and cofradía? By etymology they mean the same, it says, hermandad from germanus and cofradía from cum fratre. The 1917 Code of Canon Law did distinguish them: a pious union constituted as an organic body was an hermandad, and one erected also to increase public worship was a cofradía.[1]

The same study stresses two points a visitor might not expect. Brotherhoods are associations of the faithful within the Catholic Church, historically run mostly by lay people. And Holy Week brotherhoods are a relatively late type, appearing at the end of the 15th century or in the 16th; the study places the elements that define them in the first quarter of the 16th century.[2][1]

What Holy Week is not

It is not a show organised by the city. In Seville, the Consejo traces its origins to a federation of brotherhoods in 1930-31, constituted as a council in December 1954 and charged with overseeing compliance with canonical rules in the processions.[3] In Málaga, the Agrupación de Cofradías de Semana Santa was founded on 21 January 1921 by the heads of the founding brotherhoods and says it was the first body of its kind in Spain. The Agrupación's own history records that it introduced agreed timetables for each brotherhood and a compulsory common route, the carrera oficial, for the first time.[9] XTOUR's reading is that public authorities take part in supporting roles: the Agrupación says Málaga City Council subsidises the security arrangements it deploys.[13]

It has not always looked the way it does now. The Consejo's study says the 16th-century processions carried no flowers, canopies or bands, and that the celebration today, "at least in Seville", is festive and triumphal; its authors call the usual justification for that change a "patch" and decline to judge it further.[2] That is an opinion published by the coordinating body itself, and XTOUR reports it as such.

It is not the only time brotherhoods process. The study notes that in Andalusia, and in Seville above all, "glory" brotherhoods, devoted to the Virgin, the saints, the Sacrament or the souls in Purgatory, have either disappeared or merged into the nearest Holy Week one.[2] Some remain: the Consejo's home page listed glory processions in Seville on the weekend of 3-4 October 2026 and on four more days that month.[4]

Seville and Málaga compared

The days in the table are those the bodies' own sites use to group their brotherhoods.[10][4] Málaga's Agrupación also processes its own titular image, the Cristo Resucitado, whose first procession it dates to 1921; its history calls the processional floats tronos and their bearers hombres de trono.[9]

Seats along the official route

Both bodies handle seating, and both describe it as a subscription, not a ticket for one evening.

• Seville's Consejo allocates chairs and boxes under a published regulation, and its site lets subscribers renew, pay for, transfer and apply for subscriptions online.[7]
• Málaga's Agrupación ran its renewal of chair and stand subscriptions for Holy Week 2026 from 14 October 2025 to 30 January 2026, automatically for subscribers paying by direct debit.[11]

XTOUR does not know whether either body sells seats for a single day to non-subscribers, or what any seat costs.

What the organisers ask of spectators

Málaga's Agrupación publishes Protección Civil's general recommendations with its timetables: keep calm and follow the police, Protección Civil or security staff in an incident; avoid bringing bulky objects such as pushchairs or bicycles into crowded streets; and show consideration for older people, children and people with reduced mobility.[12] XTOUR found no equivalent list on the Seville Consejo pages it read, and does not add rules of its own.

What is published for 2027, and what is not

On 9 October 2026, Seville's Consejo showed its official itineraries and timetables for 2026.[6] For 2027 it had published the order in which the Palm Sunday brotherhoods will pass along the Carrera Oficial and the image that will preside over the brotherhoods' Vía Crucis in Lent.[4][5] Málaga's Agrupación had its 2026 timetables online and had announced that the 2027 poster, by Isabel Sola, will be presented on 14 January.[14][12]

XTOUR does not state 2027 routes, timetables or seat arrangements until these bodies publish them.

What XTOUR does not know

XTOUR does not know processions' routes, timings or crowd conditions, seat prices, or whether rain or other events will change a procession. It does not describe dress or conduct beyond what the organisers above publish. For the cities, see Seville and Málaga; for Seville's cathedral as a visit, see the Real Alcázar or the cathedral.