Most Spaniards aren't particularly religious; I'd guess that some 20% are seriously Catholic, and some 30% are out-and-out anticlerical, leaving the other half of the population not caring too much either way. Religion doesn't play an important part in the lives of some 80% of Spaniards.

This doesn't stop them from taking full advantage of religious holidays, of which there are several a year. Holy Week is the best of all, since many people take a total of ten days off, leaving work on the Friday before and coming back two Tuesdays later. In most of Spain Ash Wednesday is a holiday. Good Friday is a holiday in the whole country, and Easter Monday is a holiday in Catalonia (though Ash Wednesday isn't).

Barcelona has just been totally dead this weekend, with about half of the population away somewhere and the other half sitting around home watching TV. The city is full of tourists, that's for sure; I wonder what percentage of Barcelona's gross city product tourism makes up. I bet at least 20%. Up here in my non-tourist neighborhood we don't get any, with a few exceptions who walk down from the Park Guell.

I was supposed to have gone out of town with my wife Remei to her home village, Vallfogona de Riucorb, on Good Friday, but I had to stay in town, so we decided she would drive out there on Friday morning and then meet me in Igualada at 12:30 on Saturday. I would take the 11:00 train out there, leaving from Plaza España. I called Remei at 10:00 saying I was on my way, and walked to the Fontana metro stop. 10:15. Wait for seven minutes for the subway. Good thing I have plenty of time. Oops, the train comes into the station and then breaks down. 10:30. Crap. At least I have time to get a taxi. No, all the taxi drivers have taken the day off. I walk down to Via Augusta figuring if there's a taxi anywhere, it's there. 10:45. Damn. It's too late. Better call Remei. Oh, hell, she has no cellphone coverage out there, it's in a valley and they don't even get a lot of TV stations very well, and I don't have the phone number for the house in the village.

Finally a taxi comes, and I take it back home in order to try to reach her before she leaves. The taxi turns on Torrent de les Flors, almost home, and a large dog, a boxer, runs in front of the cab. The taxi driver slams on the brakes--I'm watching out the right-side window--and smacks into the dog with the car's bumper, sending him flying but apparently not hurting him too badly since he gets up. The dog's owner, a woman, starts screaming, and the cabbie starts screaming back that the dog should have been leashed. Of course, he's right, but it takes a couple more minutes for the argument to finish. I get home finally and it's 12:30. I call Remei in Vallfogona, and I get my mother-in-law, saying she's already left for Igualada and has left her cellphone behind. At about 1:40, when it's become obvious that I am not on the train, I get a furious telephone call. Well, now there's not much point in having her wait another couple of hours there for me to show up, so I get to spend the weekend here in Barcelona with the cats. Fortunately, I managed to appease the Wrath of Wifey and so will not be further abused. She'll be back tomorrow.

Anyway, fortunately, one of the local bars stayed open, and so did the Pakistani corner shop down on Providencia, so I was able to obtain provisions. The newsstand, the bakery, and the Dia were open Saturday morning. Pretty much all the other businesses have closed down, and few people have been out in the streets up here.

Holy Week is most famous to most Americans for the processions in Sevilla, which really do happen in almost every Spanish city. In different places they have different-sized followings; I remember once seeing a rather impressive procession in Bilbao, with several thousand people out in the streets. As far as I know, they don't even have a procession in Barcelona. I have never seen the Sevilla procession in person, but the TV coverage you've undoubtedly seen is what really happens. The number of people and their fervor are very impressive. There are at least a hundred thousand people out there, some participating out of religious motives and others out of local tradition. Secular folks also take advantage of the time off work and the excitement and action in the city to go out and party. Yes, some of the processioners really do dress up like the Ku Klux Klan; in fact, the KKK got the idea for its stereotypical costume precisely from Spanish Holy Week.

Remei's village actually has a procession, though there are only about a hundred people that show up. Then again, the permanent population is only about a hundred. I personally think religious processions are quite dull, and once you've seen one you've seen enough. But I'm a cranky aging fart.