La Macarena and Sevilla’s Wounded Pride

This is someone who is an expert—perhaps the most experienced—in restoring works of art that are also devotional images. However, they say they don’t want to talk about the restoration of the Macarena’s face for now, explaining: “Right now, it would hurt everyone, because I am in the state of a furious, wounded person. It has all been so strange, so rushed, that if I started venting, I wouldn’t leave anyone standing.”

This reflects the mood of Sevilla, which knows and remains silent, still stunned by the spectacle—practically broadcast live—of the hasty, failed, patched, and repatched restoration of the Virgin of the Macarena’s face, one of the most beloved symbols for Sevillians, both believers and many who are not. All of them could see, amidst incredulity and indignation, that the expression of the Virgin of the Macarena had changed. The eyelashes, the eyelids, the face as a whole did not seem to be the same.

“I have atheist friends, really atheist, who don’t miss their appointment with the Macarena every Holy Friday morning,” explains journalist Charo Padilla, the only woman to have delivered the Semana Santa proclamation in Sevilla. “They do not pray, nor go to mass, but that night they stand in the same corner where their mothers used to take them by the hand as children, and they get emotional. I really dislike how this issue has been handled nationally. They treat us like fanatics. They say, ‘Look how upset they got over some eyelashes.’ No, it’s not about some eyelashes; it’s about the gaze where your parents’ prayers, your most intimate memories, your feelings, your childhood are placed. Let us be emotional in whatever way we choose,” she continues.

If anyone has thoroughly studied every aspect of Andalusian society and culture throughout their life, it is anthropologist Isidoro Moreno. He argues that, to some extent, it is logical that outside Andalusia, the impact—and the seemingly disproportionate echo—it has received in Sevilla and the media regarding the failed restoration of the Macarena is not well understood. “Everything that has happened,” he explains on a bar terrace near Carmona, “should be situated in an identity dimension, even before—though not incompatible with—the religious dimension. Here, clearly, the identity dimension overwhelms the religious dimension. Some icons become identification references. Another one would be the Giralda.” He proposes a hypothesis: “Let’s imagine that the authorities of the cathedral of Sevilla decided to paint the Giralda in colors because they found some residues of paint suggesting it was painted in the 13th century… It would have been a scandal. Not just because from an artistic point of view the measure could be debated, but because the reference is changed; it’s no longer the same, and people would stop identifying with the Giralda. There are other references—not many, but certainly the Macarena is one of the most important. For the last 50 or 60 years, it has been called the Virgin of Sevilla, though many others exist, each significant for their neighborhoods or devotees,” comments the expert.

Moreno, who is 81 years old and an emeritus professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Sevilla, adds another aspect to consider for understanding the city’s reaction to the possibility that the image of the Macarena has been forever altered. “We are witnessing the confluence of two opposing phenomena. One is the dynamic of globalization; the other, the dynamic of localization. In other words, the reaffirmation of the collective identity of a city as a response, resistance, and rejection to globalization and some of its side effects, like disproportionate tourism and the loss of traditional businesses…”.

Colonized City

The terrace where the anthropologist is having green tea is called Abacería, but, beautiful as the word may be, it is merely a trick of perspective. This is not a retail store of anything, nor a grocery store, nor a provision store; it is just an ordinary bar in the midst of a city that is already fleeing from its traditional taverns because, like the legendary El Rinconcillo, they have already been colonized by influencers and tourists of various kinds. David Benítez, who runs a religious objects business that opened in 1816 on Alcaicería street, says that in the nearby Alfalfa square, “you can’t even have breakfast anymore,” because at the hour when Sevillians usually order a coffee and half a toast with ham, the Anglo tourist—more profitable, where else could it be—has already ordered a second pitcher of sangria and a precooked paella. The peculiar Gaulish village of the city, the impregnable territory safe from barbarians, hurry, and bad taste, was—at least until now—the brotherhood house.

One may have preferred Semana Santa or not, be a believer or an atheist, a devotee of Esperanza de Triana, Gran Poder, or the brotherhood of Cerro del Águila—lineage of workers next to the old wall of Hytasa—but what could not be denied to the brotherhoods was their care for their things, their insignias, their floral arrangements, their triduum, their quinario, not to mention everything concerning— in local language—their “beloved holders,” meaning the Virgin or Christ of each brotherhood.

Deciding whether next year the palio should continue to carry white gladioluses—“like it has always been”—or nardos could lead to heated discussions until the early hours of the morning, with bottles of Cruzcampo in between. Not to mention a very important issue: in Sevilla, as in many other cities around the world, traditional neighborhoods have already become prohibitive for their former residents, who have no choice but to move to overflow neighborhoods or bordering towns. If they still identify as from Triana, Macarena, San Roque, or San Bernardo, it is because they continue to pay their ticket to return to the neighborhood on Palm Sunday, Holy Wednesday, or Madrugá, the only days of the year when the neighborhood comes back to life. And also because they know that if, like during the pandemic, times get tough and money doesn’t stretch to the end of the month, resorting to the social fund of the brotherhood house will always be less harsh than the exposure of hunger queues. It has no legal value, but an image of the Christ or Virgin of the neighborhood, alongside that of Betis or Sevilla, functions as a pass of belonging, a stabilizer in the midst of migration.

That’s why—and apart from the caricature, the easy joke—nobody, absolutely nobody, can still explain what might have happened last weekend behind the walls of the basilica that would lead the brotherhood, which sets the standard for others—17,000 members, more than 4,000 of whom walk as nazarenes, a museum which is the 5th most visited in the city— to expose the image of the Macarena to such embarrassment. To the great question, what happened?, no one has provided an answer. Or not with certainty. And not, of course, through official channels. The brotherhood of the Macarena has yet to give clear or sufficient explanations, and this has only fueled confusion, speculation, and rumors.

We are on the other side of the river, in Triana, just a few meters from the brotherhood of the Star. It’s 5 PM on Thursday, 38 degrees in the shade. Fran López de Paz is a journalist who has the rare virtue of not putting on airs, but whom everyone recognizes and respects as an authority in the world of brotherhoods. He knows all the characters involved in the unfortunate farce, including the brotherhood’s elder José Antonio Fernández Cabrero, who is now being blamed by everyone. The journalist generously shares what various people have been telling him. A string of decisions—some taken out of inertia, others directly incomprehensible—that led to a fatal outcome. “The restoration proposal surprised me because it only anticipated four days for a cleaning of the Macarena’s face—a conservative intervention—when it took four months to do the same for Esperanza de Triana.”

López de Paz recounts one shocking decision after another, like that of entrusting a task so important to Francisco Arquillo, a man who is already 85 years old and long retired. “I am told you need a very steady hand to clean with a swab, because if you go too far, you not only remove the dirt but the various layers that the sculpture may have… And, as Professor Juan Manuel Piñar says, in an image, every millimeter counts.”

One of the most incomprehensible moments is when, by Saturday morning, the restorers leave the Virgin at the foot of the altar, and then the sacristan of the Macarena and others there realize that the expression of the face has changed so much that it will provoke a significant impact on the faithful. And yet, they reveal it, then withdraw it, and call others to touch it up, to change the eyelashes. It’s a complete mess. Many actions were taken with no logic whatsoever. In her proclamation for Semana Santa 2019—the only one by a woman among 84 delivered by men since it began in 1937—Charo Padilla included a phrase that somehow serves to explain the discomfort spreading throughout the city, the wounded pride of a city that so loves itself: “The Macarena is the time that never passes, the time that stops, the time that returns.”