Holy Week etiquette - Easter procession in Valladolid

Both things are appropriate, you may want to follow the procession on foot or watch it from a good point. There will be many other processions during the whole week. It´s vacation time for us, so all restaurants and bars will be very busy and open. Easter in Spain means traditions, not so much religiosity any more, but we love to celebrate our traditions even if we do not believe much anymore. In any case, all processions are very solemn, with drums and trumpets generally, and very colourful.

I was in Valladolid for Easter back in 2006 visiting my daughter (she was there for a year teaching English), and loved it. We started off in Cáceres for the Palm Sunday Semana Santa but made it back to Valladolid for the Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday processions. And they were wonderful - it is truly an experience not to be missed.

You can certainly travel with the procession to the church or just watch it or do both. I think we watched a lot of it from a standing position but would occasionally move and eventually made our way to the church to watch it enter. There will be people milling about all over town and lots of crowds. The restaurants and cafes were all open.

In terms of events, I think that Semana Santa was probably one of my most favorite experiences while traveling in Europe. Make sure you have lots of charge on your phone (if that's what you will use for photos) because you will need it! I am not religious but I found it amazing with all the beauty and color and ceremony.

From my experience of attending and participating in a few Semana Santa processions, the actual procession is made of the members of the town's hermandades, they wear those tall pointy hats with robes (not to be confused by the KKK). I don't believe the general public is allowed to move with the procession itself, it's quite a complex operation to move those very heavy floats aka "Pasos". Police usually accompany the floats.

I guess you could follow behind the end of the procession, but I imagine you will not see much at the back end. My recommendation is to find a good vantage point along the procession route to see the floats as they come by.

Valladolid has one of the best Semana Santa festivities outside of Andalucía!

they wear those tall pointy hats with robes (not to be confused by the KKK).

Ha, yes, that was pretty shocking when I first saw them in the robes, even though my daughter had prepared me. But I read up on it and found that there was no connection to the KKK. The robes are in a multitude of colors, also, unlike the all-white Klan robes.

My recommendation is to find a good vantage point along the procession route to see the floats as they come by.
Valladolid has one of the best Semana Santa festivities outside of Andalucía!

We will be staying in an apartment overlooking Plaza Mayor so might be able to see a lot of it without leaving our accommodation. We are in Valladolid from the morning of Holy Thursday until Easter Sunday when we return to Madrid. I have booked our train back to Madrid and we will leave at 11am Easter Sunday as all the later trains were ridiculously expensive (close to $200- for two of us).

Prior to Valladolid we will have been in Bilbao for a week and aren't expecting too much Easter-related activity there.

I was in Pamplona last year for their Good Friday procession. Everyone was taking photos and/or filming it. At the end, people joined in and walked behind the procession. The bars and restaurants were doing a booming business afterwards.
Though the balcony sounds nice, I don't think you get the impact of these statues from above. They are made to be seen from street level. My advice is find a good front row spot to stand, to see these "floats".

AussiNomad, do not know why you think there´s not much Easter activities in Bilbao...in fact, there are over 30 processions, all very colourful and very similar to those in Valladolid, with floats made in the 16th century and with Hermandades dating back centuries, in a very musical and drumming scenario. Those who will be in Bilbao in Easter will enjoy a less known Easter holiday, but full of beautiful processions as well. Do not miss the "Nazareno" one, that runs through the "red light" district, it´s just amazing and so popular. And the "Borriquito" (little donkey) one. Of course, during the Easter holidays only, Monday through Monday.

Dear MikelBasqueGuide, thanks for the information about Bilbao Easter activities. We aren't intending to go out of our way to find Easter processions in Bilbao but it's good to know that we might run into one.

We found Semana Santa processions in very small towns so it would surprise me if there wasn't activity in Bilbao as Mike said.