From Valletta to Seville: How Malta’s Festa Fire Took Over Spain’s Holy Week

A Maltese Feast Tradition in Spain: How Valletta’s Band Club Brought Festa Fire to Seville
By Luke Caruana

The April air in Seville’s Macarena district crackled with saffron and brass. Locals leaned from wrought-iron balconies as a red-and-white confetti storm swirled above the procession. At first glance it looked like any Spanish Semana Santa march: penitents in hooded robes, a float of the Virgin gliding on shoulders. But the band striking up the hymn was no Andalusian ensemble—it was the King’s Own Band Club of Valletta, 2,000 kilometres from home, blasting the Maltese classic “L-Innu lil San Pawl” with all the gusto of a village festa at 7 a.m.

How did Malta’s oldest band club end up leading a Spanish Holy Week procession? The answer lies in a twinning agreement signed last winter between Valletta’s kings of brass and the Hermandad de la Esperanza Macarena, one of Seville’s most venerated brotherhoods. Both cities share a patron—Saint Paul—whose shipwreck in Malta and later preaching in Hispania gave clergy on both sides of the Mediterranean an excuse to swap relics, trumpets and, inevitably, bottles of rum.

The result was “Festa en Sevilla”, a three-day cultural mash-up that saw Maltese festa culture dropped like a ricotta pastizz into Spanish Holy Week. Valletta’s mayor, who flew in with a delegation of 120 bandisti, told Hot Malta, “We wanted to show that our village feasts are not just fireworks and nougat—they are living, exportable art.” Export they did: Maltese banners draped beside the Virgin’s float, pyrotechnics from the Ta’ Għaxaq factory lighting up the Guadalquivir, and a pop-up kiosk serving Kinnie and ħobż biż-żejt to bewildered sevillanos who kept asking if the tuna was “española o italiana”.

For the 75 musicians who made the trip, the experience was part pilgrimage, part party. “We rehearsed ‘Ave Maria’ in Castilian for weeks,” admits clarinettist Rebecca Zammit, 24, still hoarse from three-hour marches. “But when we broke into ‘Għanja Papa’, the Spanish crowd went wild—they thought it was a flamenco rhythm.” Local flamenco dancers even improvised a sevillana to the Maltese tune, spinning polka-dot shawls in time with the zurna.

Back home, Valletta’s Strait Street bars streamed the procession live at 3 a.m. Maltese time. Bartender Clayton Grech poured free shots each time the band passed a Seville landmark, turning the livestream into an impromptu village square. “We felt like we were there,” says pensioner Doris Vella, who danced barefoot on the cobbles. “My grandson plays the trombone; I saw his face on the screen and cried like it was his first festa.”

The economic ripple was immediate. Within 48 hours, Air Malta reported a 30 % spike in searches for Seville flights, while the Seville tourist board added Maltese-language pages to its website. Spanish tour operators are already packaging October trips to Malta that coincide with the Ta’ Pinu and Mqabba feasts, promising “Semana Santa with fireworks”.

But the real impact is human. A WhatsApp group named “Macarena-Malta Brothers” already counts 400 members swapping recipes for rabbit stew and gazpacho. Plans are afoot for the Spanish fraternity to send a detachment of costaleros (float-bearers) to Valletta next February, where they will shoulder the statue of St Paul during the annual procession—this time padded with Maltese lace.

As the band’s final chord echoed inside Seville’s medieval walls, the Esperanza Macarena’s hermano mayor embraced Valletta’s president. “Hermanos del Mediterráneo,” he declared. Brothers of the Mediterranean. Fireworks painted the Spanish sky in the white-and-red of Malta’s flag, and for one strange, wonderful moment, the Strait of Gibraltar felt no wider than the Grand Harbour channel.

Back in Malta, village feast committees are already riffling through maps, wondering where next to plant the festa flag. If Paul could shipwreck here, why not send Gozo’s brass band to Naples, or Żejtun’s to Tripoli? After all, the only thing more contagious than a Maltese festa tune is the pride that carries it. As Rebecca Zammit packed her clarinet, a sevillano child tugged her sleeve and asked in broken English, “Next year, more?” She replied with the only word that fit: “Ta’ ħanut, definitely.”