Saturday 29th March 2025 – Ubeda, Spain

A day of sightseeing in Ubeda. We went first to the tourist office in the Plaza de Andalucia to get a map and then to the Hospital de Santiago, an impressive building but little to see inside. Returning to the centre, I walked up the Torre del Reloj tower next to the tourist office. The views of the town were excellent and I was lucky enough to be there on the hour when the bells were rung. There were many interesting buildings around the Plaza Vazquez Molina and lovely views over the olive trees to the snow-capped mountains.
As we walked back towards the museum, we heard the distant sound of drums. We tried to follow the sound through the maze of narrow streets and high buildings with confusion of reflected sound making it rather difficult. We arrived back at the Plaza de Andalucia to find band members standing on a corner and another band marching into the square. It was obvious that other bands had already arrived and were also standing around. There was a large crowd of locals there to greet the bands as they arrived. It became apparent that some of the bands were reforming and were going to continue their march out of the square, so we headed down a side street to get ahead of them. Finding a good vantage point, we watched them doing a very slow march past us. There were at least ten bands and they were all from Ubeda. They were all very good and we were especially impressed by the band with incredibly long trumpets that were led by a man carrying a Roman standard displaying SQPR and topped with an eagle. We watched them for more than half an hour and then walked on to the small, but interesting, museum.
There was much more interesting architecture on the circuitous route that we took back to the aire. We could still hear the bands and at one point they got quite close to us. They stopped at 21:00, at least 6 hours after they started. The bands all seemed to be religious and associated with the ‘Hermandads’ (brotherhoods) connected to particular churches. My theory is that they were marching around the major churches of the town, the ones to which the Hermandads were associated. The slow march would have been because of Lent.
Photos: The view from the tower and with a magnifying glass, you may spot Jane sat on a bench in the square; Lovely pottery from a group of Ubeda artisans; A carving of Jesus being taken down from the cross, ready to be taken on procession; The dome of Ubeda cathedral; The Roman standard being carried in front of one of the bands; The Roman band leader signals to the band to start playing – note the very young band member carrying a small trumpet accompanying his father – they start teaching them from an early age!; All ages and women and men make up the bands.