The magenta brotherhood returns from San Antolín to the streets packed with Murcia to celebrate 125 years of its first outing
And there, in the most traditional and working-class neighborhood, the one of people who always looked for bread more at the wrong time than on time, the balconies covered with magenta flags and restless patrons, with long lines of brothers on the side of San Antolín, of the The bars of Luis de la Rosario or Guinea are still full of people when, at seven o’clock in the afternoon, time stops, as it has done for two years due to the pandemic, and so many look at the door of the temple waiting for its hinges to squeak again, for Pater Don Rafael to look restlessly into the plaza, and the sounds of muffled drums announce, this time, that the Brotherhood of the Holy Christ of Forgiveness will once again rule, because it is his but, of the streets that yearn for it so much.
To You Forgive me, even if it wasn’t in procession, that’s the least of it, many have felt you in this fateful time. And they have seen you in their homes, orphans in magenta tunics, the mulberry shelves in the storage rooms abandoned and sad, grandfather’s petticoats without recent starch, the only inheritance he left to his family, and almost forgotten stockings, where they grow colorful stitches of that saintly grandmother, at the bottom of some orchard chest.
ROS CAVAL /AGM
The most Nazarene wind
To You Forgiveness, in this neighborhood that missed you so much in these two years, many felt you when they went out to their balconies to applaud the toilets, their faces broken in tears because they wanted, as happened yesterday, to peek over them to see you ride, especially that sailboat that shakes the most Nazarene wind, Calle del Pilar, also then deserted of balloon carts, of gypsies at the foot of their chairs as if they were authentic thrones of Nazarene, of full families enjoying an impromptu snack while waiting for your step
To you Forgive me, more than Christ you are a neighbor of a block of Sagasta Street, not a few felt you in the solitude of their confinement
To You Forgive me, more than Christ you are a resident of a block of Sagasta Street, not a few felt you in the solitude of their confinement, in the sadness of not tasting a typical Holy Monday: to burst the neighborhood under an atmosphere of orange blossom of spring at the passage of your throne, the one that shakes the last lights of the afternoon while its remote woods creak every time it stops and advances, like the gear that marks the clock of Holy Week in Murcia to the rhythm of the shoulders of shelves of race, those that Los Rojos taught an unbreakable truth: That the Murcian Passion is felt in the legs, broken back towards the platform and shattered shoulders because the one they support is the Lord of the Malecón.
To You Forgive me, when yesterday you descended the sacred slope of your parish, they acclaimed you to the point of hoarseness because for so many you were a consolation when the pandemic overwhelmed those who loved them the most, convinced that in that last moment of their lives they had no other consolation than remembering how many For years they were aldermen or penitents or musicians in your courtship, or they simply came out to meet you on any street in the neighborhood, setting up the chairs in their living room on the run or, very early, reserving the ones they sell with sheets of paper stuck to the ground with the name of the family, as authentic notarial certificate on the cobblestones.
In this neighborhood that missed you so much in these two years, many felt you when they went out to their balconies to applaud the toilets
To You Forgiveness, who premiered the crown of thorns last night, there are not a few who, even stuffed with lunch that became lunch and snack, got up from their chairs as you passed, because not just anyone passed by: the King of San Antolín passed by, even once a year, he is sovereign of a Murcia that surrenders to the aroma of the rosebush that climbs its remote wood.
The whole city surrendered to You Forgiveness last night when you headed your way back, which was the way of the normal brotherhood, which had nothing new except that so many more tears covered it than in other years, because many believed that in this life no they would not see the square crowded with people, they would not hear the saeta nor the fervorín would excite them, nor would President Avilés, who has worked so hard to get you out again, would be moved again at your entrance with the sounds of the Royal March.
This city owes you Forgiveness that every year, every Holy Monday, you remind it of its orchard and Nazarene origins, even for those who do not even believe in You, but are captivated by that way of walking of your throne, unique in Holy Week. , and in the atmosphere of respect that at every step of your shelves, as if with their espadrilles they were dispelling the dust of two years of sleepy career, they remind us that it is not possible to feel like a Murcian without seeing you, even if it is only once in a lifetime, walk through Murcia.
A Ti Pardon, in short, being made of such fragile wood, there is no one who does not recognize that each vein, under the varnish of the centuries, treasures so much history and devotion that, if Murcian Holy Monday did not exist, someone would have to invent it. And so, with a firm step and an accurate blow on the platform, yesterday the parade of the tastiest tradition vanished, the most authentic for treasuring as an agora and forum a neighborhood that, despite so much calamity in the last two years, showed that It remains to his forgiveness, that he is a citizen with a national Nazarene document in the heart of San Antolín.
#Forgiveness #traditional #neighborhood #surrenders