The Virgin of Sorrows

Every Easter on the Friday night before Palm Sunday, tableaux of the stations of the cross are paraded through the streets of Banyoles, carried on biers and pushed by a team of attendants they are treated with reverence and the crowds lining the streets are mainly silent as the procession passes before them.

In the van are two companies,maybe 70 men in all, of roman soldiers. Dressed in breastplates and helmets with leather skirts and cross tied boots they each carry a lance with which they rhythmically beat the stones as they march.

It would be easy to lampoon this scene, but the combination of the hollow beat,the silent crowds, the candles and the swaying biers accompanied by penitents, some barefoot, and priests makes for a strangely moving spectacle.

They parade for about an hour, returning to the church of Santa Maria, and the biers are blessed by the bishop and Holy Week is inaugurated.