Easter in Menorca

The Easter in Menorca is also celebrated with Brotherhoods and processions, like in the rest of Spain, although within the festive year it is not of the most outstanding festivals.
    Instead of to realise each Brotherhood a different procession, in Menorca realises all of them joint ones (there are seven). At the moment, in Mahón they occupy only two days (Domingo de Ramos and to the Good Friday), whereas in Ciutadella they divide only the Good Friday, accompanied by the choir by the Davídica Chapel and the band by the Cathedral by Citadel.
      The most important brotherhood of Menorca is the one of the Most precious Blood of Our Mr. Jesus Christ, well-known popularly by the Blood, and was established canonically by Merciful Pope XIII in 1772. It had in his small origin a oratory next to the new hospital that was constructed in 1729, risen under the English domination, and that was used for the service and spiritual aid of the patients entered there and poor people, where the hospital was to them his last refuge. To the being property of the City council, by problems of humidity and lack of space, they were transferred to the Church of San jOse, next to the hospital, giving fitted not only to the patients, but also to healthy the devotee ones.
  From century XVI to 1836, this brotherhood organized and governed the old processions in the nights of Thursday and Good Friday, carrying each of them a representation of the passion and death of Our Gentleman Thursday, and the image of the yaciente Christ, representing therefore Santo Entierro Friday. Until in 1840, with the approval of the liberal regime of the third Spanish constitution, these processions underwent some changes: the one of Thursday it was suppressed and the one of Friday it underwent a deep change in his composition. The Domingo de Resurrección, formerly, the streets of Mahón also were scene of a procession with the presence of the Bishop of Menorca. Nowadays, still something is conserved with Procesión of the “Encounter”, that is celebrated in the morning. In this procession, the images of the Revived Christ and the Virgin of the blue and white Solitude dressed, are one against the other, symbolizing the welcome to the great Mystery of the Resurrection.
    At the moment the Domingo de Ramos (procession of the Route crucis), the Brotherhoods in Mahón meet to start off in procession from the Church of San Francisco; the Good Friday, leaves from the Church of Santa Maria, next to the City council of Mahón, takes a walk by the old helmet of the city and returns to the Church to finish with the ceremony of Santo Entierro, realising a route a little more length than the previous one.
    The iconography of the brotherhood is the one of the Crucified Christ (also called “the Good Shepherd”), accompanied by the image of Maria Magdalena who embraces on the foot de la Cruz to him, processional mystery that dates from the last decade of century XVII.