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Paso del Cristo de la Hermandad de Pino Montano, one of the first processions that have returned to the streets of Seville this 2022.
La Casa del Cofrade, a landmark establishment in Seville, has been bustles with activity. Its premises, in the central Matahacas street of the Andalusian capital, is a continuous coming and going of Sevillians loaded with tunics, hoods and other necessary items so that Holy Week is in all its splendor and the processions look impeccable.
The transfer -and the billing that it entails- in the Casa del Cofrade is the usual… before the pandemic, since in these years of restrictions due to Covid-19 they have been almost like a force close. And, as for this business, for all those linked, in one way or another, to Easter. Not only in Seville, but in the entire Andalusian community, in which the two years that have just been left behind have meant, in economic terms, a blow and a drought of income in a week that, traditionally, is a real manna.
Although tourism, one of the main industries that drives the engine of Andalusian economy, is perhaps the most benefited activity, the effects of Holy Week are felt in a wide variety of activities and businesses. From restaurants to hotels, through textile shops, craft workshops and hood shops, such as the Casa del Cofrade.
Beyond the religious meaning, the devotion of those who confess themselves as brothers and flood the temples these days, Holy Week is a great business on which thousands of jobs depend.
It is difficult to quantify the global impact of Holy Week in Andalusia as a whole, but there are reports and local studies that serve to get a fairly rough idea of the rain of millions, of hundreds of millions, that rains down on the community these days, without pandemic restrictions in between.
To begin with the capital, and one of the cities where these festivities are celebrated with the greatest intensity, the Seville City Council calculates that, in normal times, Holy Week affects the city by an approximate amount of 400 million euros.
The figure is not as up-to-date as would be desirable, but it is the last one given by the municipal government before the pandemic and represents a 1.3% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the city. That is to say, that in just seven days Seville enters more than one of every one hundred euros that it bills in twelve months.
Málaga, which is the other great brotherhood capital, benefits at Easter from an economic impact of more than 102 million euros. Or, at least, that was what was coming in before SARS-CoV-2 burst into everyone’s lives and turned everything upside down in 2020.
The last known study in the capital of the Costa del Sol, that of the Cofrades Studies Chair of the University of Malaga, encrypted the direct income -always before the pandemic- at 53.7 million euros. In 2019, in full bonanza, that represented an increase of 25% compared to 2016.
But Seville and Malaga are not the only ones that this year expectantly await the economic reactivation coupled with these holidays. No province or capital of the community is oblivious to the many benefits it brings.
In the case of Córdobaa study by the Association of Brotherhoods and Brotherhoods calculated in 2009 an impact of more than 42 million euros in the capital and another report, this one much more recent and prepared by Economic Analysts of Andalusia, estimated the income for Holy Week throughout the Cordoba province in more than 330 million euros.
Taking these data into account and referring only to three capitals – Holy Week is lived throughout Andalusia -, the economic impact exceeds 500 million euros.
The sightseeing It is, without a doubt, the business that takes most of this money and, therefore, the hotel and catering sector is the one that most anxiously awaits this week of celebration that officially begins today.
There is much to recover if the official pre-pandemic tourist balances are attended. The last one, that of 2019, of the Ministry of Tourism, recorded income from the activity during Holy Week throughout Andalusia of 352 million euros, a figure that was 4.5% higher than that of the previous year, 2018.
That year, the last one before the Covid health crisis broke out, they traveled to the community 768,000 touristswith an average stay of 6.7 days and an average daily cost of almost 70 euros.
After a two-year journey through the desert, the tourism sector hopes to recover, if not all, then a good part of the business that the virus took away.
In fact, the forecasts handled by the Board, and which the Vice President and Minister of Tourism, Juan Marín, has been detailing these days, point to a average occupancy of 70%with peaks of 95% in the last days of the week.
If the forecasts come true, it will mean that, to a large extent, the lost ground has been recovered, although there is still a long way to go before reaching 2019 levels. In fact, there are hotels that are still closed.
The good prospects are also attested by the forecasts for employment creation that are handled. A Ranstad report calculates that in Andalusia 13,280 contracts will be made this Easter, 8,233 more than in 2021, that is, 147.4% more than in the same period last year and 1.8 percentage points more than the average that is expected throughout Spain.
The jobs that are expected to be created in Andalusia during these holidays will mean, according to Ranstad’s estimates, the 21,8% of all the country.
Even so, hiring will be 45.8% lower than that registered in 2019, which gives an idea of everything what remains to recover In economic terms. The year before the pandemic, 25,476 contracts were signed during Easter in the Andalusian community.
By provinces, the estimates of this company specialized in human resources suggest that three are the ones that are going to concentrate most of the hiring: Cádiz, with 3,370; Málaga, with 2,840, and Seville, with 2,600.
In the rest of the community, Ranstad forecasts indicate that 1,330 contracts could be closed in Jaén; in Grenada, 1,160; in Cordova, 890; in Almería, 860, and in Huelva, at the tail end of job creation for Easter, 770 contracts would be signed.