In the Basque Country you can enjoy traditional celebrations full of local color concerning the Corpus Christi.
The religious celebration of the Corpus Christi is the Body and Christ’s Blood celebration, it reminds the institution of the Eucharist, which the Holy Thursday carried out, during the Last Dinner when Jesus turned the bread and the wine into his Body and his Blood. At present the Corpus is celebrated on next Sunday following Thursday as this day is not bank holiday anymore.
In Segura the celebration depends on the lunar calendar, is in the habit of being a few days before the summer solstice, this year is celebrated on June 14. According to experts seems to intermingle the pagan rites of celebration of the solstice and the beginning of the crop with the religious rite, on the one hand with the flower offerings on the streets and the procession of Christ’s image along the streets.
Also in Oñati the Corpus Christi has a magnificent procession celebrated on Sunday from 1990, is undoubtedly the procesion that has manteined better its characteristics of the whole Basque Country being the most spectacular. Day of great solemnity, tradition, religiousness and dance be founded on the peculiar procession that after the mass, crosses the streets of the village.
On Eve and the day before Eve of the celebration of the Corpus, the basque dancers cross the streets and the neighborhoods of the Villa dancing and doing collection. The day of the Habeas, before the procession beginning, they receive one to one to the different steps that were taking part in the same one, then they go to the search of the living step of San Miguel that together with twelve Apostles provided with masks, they constitute the central part of the procession. The basque dancers cross the streets dancing during the whole tour procesional. They dance before the steps, before the small altars of the way, before the living step of San Miguel and it they do making sound their castanets constantly. Once inside the Church and before the Consecration they dance again before the Christ image.
In the evening, in the square, they represent the complete cycle of dances of “Korpus Dantzak”: San Sebastianen Dantza, Banako Makil Dantza, Launako Makil Dantza, Zortziko Makil Dantza and Arku Dantza. Finished the cycle they dance an Aurresku. The dantzaris dress, besides trousers and white shirt, a few coat-tails or red sayuelas called Valencian and red band and tie.
To enjoy this celebration you can come to the midday of June 14, 2009 and just after the mass it begins the central act of the procession.
In former Bilbao close to the celebration of the Corpus Christi, the holidays of the Villa were celebrated, with bullfights and other events of a form parallel to the religious celebration, how we all know nowadays the holidays of Bilbao are celebrated in August, named the Big Week (Aste Nagusia), but this is a more modern invention of the year 1978 to be exact, since there had got lost the tradition of celebrating both united holidays.
It is a party that continues waking admiration up in Bilbao, though to be sincere it had a few years in which it remained relegated to the interior of the temples. The procession of Bilbao was recovered by the bishop of the Bizcaya capital a few years ago and it has managed to be consolidated. The acts begin with a mass in the Cathedral of Bilbao, celebrated by the own Bishop.
When it finishes the liturgical ceremony, begins the procession, in which there take part the bishop, numerous priests, the courtship that is opened by the Parochial Cross and a confreres’ great representation of the Fraternity and Confraternities. In 2008 there was placed a huge carpet done with papers of diferent colors where a Custody was represented. Likewise acolytes, priests gave color to the celebration, the txistularis, a basque dancer, and certainly the Chapel of Music with a metal quartet.
