Story By: Ana Lacasa, Sub Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency: Newsflash

Newsflash/@armadaesp

This is the moment Spanish soldiers march an icon of the Virgin Mary down the deck of a navy boat at sea in the only traditional Easter parade which was allowed this year.

The video was filmed on board the Spanish Army’s Juan Sebastian Elcano training ship, with only crew members being allowed to attend the parade, reportedly the only authorised in the country.

The ship was at sea during the parade, having set out five months ago and it has now docked in Marin in the northwestern Spanish region of Galicia.

In the video, the crew members can be seen marching an icon of the Virgin of Dolorosa down the deck as a marching band plays.

A priest is also in attendance and local media report he bought the figure of the Virgin with his own money and took it onto the ship from the beginning of the trip.

It is a tradition to carry out the religious parade on the boat if it is at sea during Easter.

The ship has 197 people on board, including 146 soldiers, 24 officers, 22 sub-officers, five civilians and had left the port of Cadiz, in the southern Spanish region of Andalusia, in early March on the last leg of its five-month trip.

The voyage included nine ports in Spain and the Americas some of which were used 500 years ago in the expedition of Elcano and Magallanes who were the first people to sail around the world.

The ports were Las Palmas (Spain), Mar del Plata (Argentina), Montevideo (Uruguay), Buenos Aires (Argentina), Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), Recife (Brazil), Curacao (Netherlands), Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic) and Miami (US).

According to the latest figures from the Johns Hopkins University Spain has registered 166,831 cases of COVID-19, with 17,209 deaths.

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