Setmana Santa i Pasqua

Setmana Santa in Catalonia follows the Christian calendar, so the dates move each year between late March and late April. It starts on Diumenge de Rams, or Palm Sunday, when people take palm fronds, olive branches, or laurel to church to be blessed. Through Thursday and Friday, many towns hold processions with pasos, drums, and penitents; one of the best known is the Processó del Sant Enterrament in Tarragona. In Verges, in the Baix Empordà, Maundy Thursday includes the famous Dansa de la Mort, whose skeletal dancers pass through the streets at night. Good Friday is especially solemn, with church services, reduced business hours, and crowds lining old-town streets for evening processions.

Pasqua reaches its most festive moment on Easter Sunday and especially on Dilluns de Pasqua, which is a public holiday in Catalonia. The central custom is the mona de Pasqua: traditionally a cake topped with eggs, but today often an elaborate chocolate figure bought from a bakery. Godparents give the mona to their godchildren, and families usually eat it after lunch or take it on an outing to the countryside or the beach if the weather is good. Bakery windows fill with giant chocolate footballs, cartoon characters, and castles in the previous weeks. Children compare whose mona is biggest, adults wish each other bona Pasqua, and the mood is much lighter than during Holy Week.

The pack has 36 words spread across these domains.