“I have been soulless. This is not my virgin.” Natalia Redondo, sister of the 56 -year -old Macarena, rinses the tears that do not stop sprouting from her eyes. It is one of the 500 people who have concentrated in front of the Basilica of the Brotherhood of the Macarena at seven in the afternoon to protest the restoration – which have actually been three – which has been carried out on the size of the seventeenth century and has changed substantially the expression of the image.
The congregates have drawn the accumulated anger since on Saturday they dawned with a face of the Virgin that did not respond to the promise of minimal maintenance work that the brotherhood moved them last November. The stupefaction was increasing when in less than 24 hours, the size was re -retouched twice – first to cut the eyelashes and then to return part of the reddish tone that surrounds his eyes – and try to recover the appearance of a face that is a symbol not only for the Sevillians, but for the thousands of devotees he has outside the city.
But many of the protesters regretted more than physical change, the lack of transparency of the brotherhood throughout this process. “The brothers, the devotees, has been hidden, what has been done to the Virgin already this time we still do not know who has carried out the interventions on Saturday afternoon and at night,” explains Antonio Gravito, 20 -year -old brother.
That demand for explanations was included in the manifesto that has been read shortly after seven in the afternoon. “We ask and demand a detailed report in detail of the maintenance work that has been carried out in our sacred image,” said the document. To the request for transparency, the resignation of the older brother, José Antonio Fernández Cabrero, and of his Government Board that was precisely gathered at that same time at the headquarters of the Brotherhood, next to the Basilica, in an extraordinary meeting called the previous day to address the crisis. “They are going to hold on to the armchair because only five months remain for the elections for older brother, but they have forgotten that the Virgin is not theirs. The macarena is not a statue, it is something very large that escapes them,” said Álvaro García, another 25 -year -old brother.
But above the request for explanations and the resignation of those responsible for the Brotherhood, among the congregates underlying the yearning – hope, never better – that the Virgin could recover her previous face. “Now he looks a little more to our Virgin, but he has totally lost the expression of his eyes, his gaze. Now he has a sad look, the eye as more closed and we want our hope to come back,” Carmen Lencina said after singing the anthem of hope of hope Macarena, which is sung every time the pace pass enters the basilica after the early morning. Some experts say it is possible. But Natalia, even in tears, doubts. “I think we have lost it forever.”