Granada is getting ready to celebrate one of the most important and anticipated days of the year, as this Thursday the traditional Corpus Christi procession will take place. This year comes with a great novelty, the return of the «seises», who after decades of absence will once again fill the streets with their music and dance, accompanying the procession throughout the route.
The procession will start at 10:15 a.m. from the Cathedral and will go through the historic center of the city, ending its route at Plaza de las Pasiegas, from where it will return to the cathedral. Corpus Christi Thursday is the day when the custodian of the Blessed Sacrament parades through the streets of Granada, integrated into the solemn Corpus Christi procession, a celebration with both religious and popular roots, as highlighted by the City Council on its website, consulted by Europa Press.
The official itinerary of the procession will be as follows: departure from the Cathedral, Pasiegas, Marqués de Gerona, Mesones, Reyes Católicos, Plaza Isabel la Católica, Gran Vía de Colón, Cárcel Baja, Pie de la Torre, Pasiegas, and return to the Cathedral. Along the route, chairs will be placed for the public, for which no prior reservation is necessary; simply, if there are available seats, one can be taken and the corresponding amount paid to the collector when they pass by.
THE RETURN OF THE «SEISES»
The traditional dance of the «seises,» promoted by the Archbishopric, returns this year with a group of 25 children from 3rd to 5th grade at the Virgen de Gracia school. They will be responsible for interpreting the music and dance at the Cathedral of Granada this Corpus Christi Thursday and will subsequently participate in the procession.
Since the recovery project was presented last June, the children in the group have been familiarizing themselves with the music they will perform. It is a work by the Andalusian composer and organist Francisco Correa de Arauxo, adapted for the occasion by Héctor Eliel Márquez, director of the Schola Pueri Cantores of the Cathedral.
The piece, titled ‘Prosa del Santísimo Sacramento’, is a sacred music work from the end of the Spanish Renaissance, specifically composed for the Corpus Christi festivity. It will be performed by the «seises» and the Schola Pueri Cantores, accompanied on the organ by Concepción Fernández Vivas, Cathedral organist. For this celebration, an originally based piece on a popular chant has been recovered about the sequence ‘Lauda Sion Salvatorem’, specific to Corpus Christi day and one of the four sequences still maintained in the Roman Missal.
