ISSUE NO. 1605
7 - 13 April 2016
COSTA BLANCA SOUTH
YOUR PAPER, YOUR VOICE, YOUR OPINION
Monastic magnet PILGRIMAGE is one of Spain’s greatest festivals By Matthew Elliott Hundreds of thousands of people will today descend on Alicante in celebration of a five centuries old pilgrimage that will effectively shut down the entire city in a rapture of religious euphoria and community spirit. Police have shut down the route between Alicante and the Monastery of Santa Faz from 4am on April 7 and recruited hundreds of extra officers to man security checkpoints. Access from certain points of the A-7 motorway has been closed to traffic by the Guardia Civil and recent estimates suggest that an incredible 300,000 people will cram into the pilgrimage route, which begins at the Cathedral of St Nicholas. On the ground there will be first aid services, ambulances, civil defence volunteers, undercover police and more than 30 checkpoints. A police helicopter will scan the crowd for trouble while additional trains and buses have been scheduled to take festive revellers in and out of the city. The pilgrimage to Santa Faz, just eight kilometres from Alicante centre, is one of Spain’s greatest festivals and
an iconic religious celebration that stretches back to the middle ages. With representatives from all sections of society attending, mainly dressed in traditional black garb, the area will grind to a standstill as families gather in one of the Costa Blanca’s more intimate and peaceable observances. With traffic essentially banned, shops shut and the streets packed with people of
all shapes and sizes, professions and backgrounds, ages and nationalities, today is one of the very few when the mod-
ern world ceases its endless march for a simple moment devoted to family and community.
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