In 2019 a video was viralized that showed a group of young people, cheating the Virgen de los Dolores in a procession of Holy Week in Seville. The delivered of the compliments (“Queen of Holy Tuesday!”, “The whole neighborhood for you!”) And the tone with which they were thrown unleashed all kinds of comments, many of them openly homophobic and, above all, Plumophobes. In any case, they did not surprise those who are used to Holy Week in the Andalusian capital and their intimate relationship between the Catholic fervor and the very personal LGTBI militancy of many of the devotees of the images.
To scream, young. In reality, the phenomenon of the “chillaores”, as these young people are known, has nothing again, as some guardians of the essences of Holy Week believe (although it is true that it is now when the Church has been in favor of “cutting hysterisms”). For example, in 1916, Eugenio Noel already documented phrases such as “This Virgin passes through the crotch to all the virgins of Seville” shouted to the passage of hope of Macarena.
Humble neighborhoods. These cheers had a lot of social vindication in their day, since both the Triana and Macarena neighborhood were popular areas that adorned their virgins as a challenge to the aristocracy of the central processions. There the screams with a corrosive point made sense, intolerable for central (and ecclesiastical) power. Today Seville is a very different city, but customs bloom again: Noel talked about how at Madrugá “the cathedral does not close, the taverns either, and the life of the brothels is more active than ever.” Holy Week is a performative activity, whether it opts for dawn and extreme sobriety.
“Dolores beautiful!” This was what Jesus Pascual realized when he saw the viral video. He began to investigate the strong LGTBI component of Holy Week in Seville and embodied it in a documentary entitled as the cry that the launched by the chillaores of the video, and that can be seen in Filmin and Prime Video. The result is an amalgam of influences that make clear the popular nature of Holy Week in Seville and how symbols can be reinterpreted without losing anything of its original meaning. At the same time paradoxically corrosive and traditional, ‘Dolores beautiful!’ He is revealing especially when the self -denominated “shellfish shelves” speak of the tradition of the steps and the bearers as a land paid for gay feeling.
Two ways to see it. In Dolores beautiful! It is said that “there are two religions: that of Rome and that of Seville.” It refers to Catholicism and the multiple ways of understanding its iconography, where the Virgin Mary, pure femininity and maternal symbol, is both a pyo and diva symbol to dress like a folkloric (another eminently Andalusian environment that gays have made their own, despite the traditionally homophobic opposition of the church and the most immobilistic Church and Spain).
Rodríguez Ojeda, referent. The documentary is mentioned, as an essential reference, to the embroidery Juan Manuel Rodríguez Ojeda, a recognized homosexual that revolutionized Holy Week at the end of the 19th century. Among his essential works are the mantle of the Virgen de la Macarena (which was revolutionary in his day, for distanceing himself from the most sober mantles seen so far) or the costumes of the Roman century, which decorated with feathers and leotards. This color and precious made a lot to inject from an unheard of sensitivity queer to the Holy Week of Seville. In fact, with him a prototype gay participation was established in artistic work, jewelers to virgin dressing rooms.
Your double morals, thanks. Although this homosexual presence is open and recognized, in many cases declared, there is still some tension: integration is there, but the signal also: the Church demands “moral” behaviors to homosexual and divorced. The cries to the Virgin are thus a form of claiming a reality that, due to the presence of the Church, cannot be official: once again, as happened before in cinema and in music, sensitivity camp It serves as a declaration of intentions (and as the construction of an alternative family environment in the face of your own rejection).
New times for the Baroque. In recent times, new artists and movements that claim this reality have emerged. Carlos Carvento Fusiona Mantillas Sevillanas with attitudes of drag queen; groups such as Palio Project fight for trans visibility in the brotherhoods; And finally, scandals such as the 2024 Holy Week poster of Salustiano García, who questioned the iconography of Christ, open debates that help to make visible a struggle of aesthetics and wills that have been bubbling into the brotherhoods for years.
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