Good afternoon to all of you who join me on this Palm Sunday 2014 and I thank you for your assistance.

Thank you Miguel for your presentation, both for the content with those undeserved praises, and for the verses with which you have expressed it.

Thanks to the priest, Don Agapito, for welcoming us in this church and facilitating the development of the proclamation.

Thanks to the mayor and the justice for the accompaniment.

Thanks to the Junta Pro Semana Santa for offering me the honor of making the proclamation this year. And thank you for your dedication and time to promote Holy Week in Villafáfila.

And to all of you who make it possible with your quiet work of dressing images, cleaning the litters, putting the flowers... and so many other small tasks.

And Javi for the posters that each year serve to promote it.

There is a famous work by Moliere: the beaten doctor, today I here, where being a doctor is secondary, one could almost say that I am the beaten crier, and not because I am unhappy proclaiming Holy Week to my countrymen, my friends, my family…, if not because I have resisted trying to maintain my consolidated role as presenter, more comfortable, and considering that the profile of the town crier had to correspond to someone with an age or merits somewhat older than mine, and thinking more in some woman, because in recent years it has been a thing for men, …

But here I am full of pride before you to gloss our Holy Week.

First of all, the memories for those who are not with us, all those who have preceded us as parishioners and as neighbors, and especially for my father who has already left us for 7 years, and for Don Camilo, the priest who baptized me. , of which I was an altar boy in this parish and a student at the San Marcos school, to which our local poet, Jacinto Fuertes, dedicated some verses:

On a path of stars

of Christmas stars,

New Year's Day,

Don Camilo is leaving us.

Through white meadows

of Christmas,

sky road

I wanted to leave...

These days evoke childhood memories and experiences of Holy Week almost 50 years ago, which parade through my memory:

  The brand new Palm Sunday, when they already put on our shorts; the afternoons of Holy Thursday with the long readings of the Passion, the departure from the trades, rights to buy Maria's churros; the processions, at first ordered by the teachers, later as penitents carrying steps, always with the sounds of the sung Via Crucis resounding in the background.

  Childhood and adolescent years of felt and lived faith, and years of youth with the secular liturgies of lemonades and the long Holy Thursday nights of splicing until the procession, years that all the youth stayed in the town...

And apart from personal memories, Holy Week in Villafáfila is maintained and renewed: sermons disappear, dark services, new processions appear, others change days,... it is still present here in our annual calendar, and today I It's time to announce it.

The Holy Week celebrations date back to the Middle Ages, but in the case of Villafáfila we do not have documentation until the 16th century. They are liturgical functions around the death and resurrection of Christ, which consisted of a series of religious services in the seven churches of that time in charge of the priests and other clerics, and processions through the streets organized by the various brotherhoods that were emerging. along the centuries.

- Already this morning we have celebrated the Procession of the Palms, with the traditional laurel branches waving them in honor and memory of the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, in which the praises and joys that the people dedicated to him:        Hossanna to the son of David …

they are a prelude and contrast to the bitter days that awaited him on the following days when they shouted before Pilate: Cucify him! crucify him !

- The Proclamation of Holy Week this afternoon has already become something traditional, after five years in a row celebrating it and I hope it will continue as one of the occasions to create community, to highlight shared memories, and meet again with our countrymen.

- Next, the Auction or Adjustment of the saints that are going to go out in procession these days will take place. It is one of the most peculiar acts of our SS that dates back at least to the beginning of the 19th century, maintaining the bid for Jesus as the most closely fought, that of the trumpet or that of Saint John as an initiation rite for the youngest, and the reserves to carry the Urn , of which it was once said that they put bars or adobe bricks to make it weigh more.

- On Wednesday at eleven o'clock at night, the brotherhood of Santo Cristo de la Misericordia parades, which was established 20 years ago with the purpose of renewing our Holy Week, in the Procession of Silence . The image is baroque from the 17th century, with an embroidered skirt and shroud that conceals the disproportion of her arms.

From the town hall, at the stroke of midnight, in charge of a choir of people who lived it in their youth and learned it in the parish or in the seminary, in the pre-conciliar liturgies, he resonates:

Miserere mei, Deeeeeeus:   

secundum magnaaaam    

miseeeriiicoordiam tuuuuaaam

et secunduuum multitudineeem     

miserationum tuuaaaarum,

 deeeel…. iniiiquitatem meeeeam.…

and Christ's mane and shroud swaying in the wind, constitute one of the most exciting moments of our Holy Week, and we should not miss it, so I encourage younger people to join the choir.

- On Holy Thursday, after a morning of preparations, the Sacred Offices take place with the reading of the Passion of Christ on one of the three most important Thursdays of the year that shone brighter than the sun.

The Thursday of the commandment of love. The first and most important of Christianity.

-   At 8 in the afternoon the Ecce Homo Procession starts ,

Forgive your people, Lord,

Forgive your people

Forgive him, Lord

For the wounds of feet and hands,

for the whipping so inhuman,

Forgive him, Lord.

 It is one of the penitential processions with an image of Jesus tied to the column, from the old church of San Salvador, sculpted in the mid-18th century and which went out in procession on Holy Tuesdays, and from 1861 on Thursdays , with great devotion in his parish of origin.

- The Holy Hour , at 10:30 p.m., a moment of gathering prayer before the Blessed Sacrament in the monument, which since the Council of Trent was built in all parishes, with tapestries, carpets, curtains, shields, angels, candles and candles, in a baroque composition to accommodate the temporary transfer of the body of Christ.

-At 11 o'clock the recently recovered Procession of Vera Cruz parades:

Now, my soul, on the cross hard bed,

its sacred limbs extend your Good;

and with sharp nails they pierce

the vile soldiers their hands and feet .

Belonging to the oldest brotherhood in Villafáfila, and one of the earliest documented in the province, in 1490, which had its headquarters in the hermitage of the same name, next to the church of San Andrés, parades the image of Christ of the Vera Cruz, a valuable carving by the German or Flemish sculptor, Alejo de Bahía, dated at the end of the 15th century, which preserves the original polychromy.

The bearers, men and women with the traditional Castilian cape, in memory of our ancestors to the old cemetery where so many of them have rested. Although no brotherhood has been established and is open to all, from here I call for participation and improvement of the parade with order, silence and accompanied by a lantern if possible.

- On the morning of Good Friday they leave Santa María, and formerly they did from San Martín, Jesus with the cross on his back, María with the cloths, and San Juan to recreate the Meeting between mother and son, making the square the painful way of Jerusalem.

From Calvary climbing to the summit

the Divine Prisoner found his Mother;

and a sharp edged sword

of the Son and the Mother wounded the heart.

The images belonged to the old parishes of San Juan (the Baptist in the role of Evangelist), and San Martín, where the brotherhood of Jesús Nazareno was based, the most important of Holy Week, founded around 1700, which came to have 340 brothers. The image is from the end of the 17th century, to which the town professes the greatest devotion, and about which my grandmother Cirila told me in my childhood that they wanted to sell at the beginning of the 20th century, to which the town as a whole opposed. “ Throw here ”, pointing to her chest, some old men told the guards, including Mr. Mateo Alonso.

The preacher's voice still echoes from Pajarote's balcony:

 “ Juan runs to see Maria …”

and in the photo that is preserved, prior to 1928, we see reflected the Villafáfila of the early twentieth century: The men with capes or fur coats, the women with the toquillas and black handkerchiefs, some carrying children in their arms, the penitents with their fardel hoods and large rosaries on their chests, all in a motley procession around the images, … it seems that devotion is palpable.

- The afternoon of Good Friday is an afternoon of mourning. The early and sad services for the death of the redeemer will give way to the Procession of the Holy Burial .

Las Angustias, Cristo de la Urna and La Dolorosa leave from Santa María as before they did from San Pedro.

The image of the Anguish of Our Lady, represents the moment when the mother picks up the dead son on her lap, which is known elsewhere as Piety, because both sentiments arouse its contemplation: the anguish of the tragic moment moves one to pity .

  Of Jesus the sacred corpse,

Mary in his arms crying took;

and with a painful voice he said;

Who, death has given you, my Good and my Love?

The image, one of the most valuable of our Holy Week, was contracted by the steward of the church of San Pedro with the Portuguese sculptor Gaspar de Acosta in 1605 with the condition of a suitable size to go out in procession, an indication of the antiquity of the same.

The Christ of the Urn, a beautiful Baroque sculpture from the 17th century, has recovered its original polychrome thanks to the restoration promoted by the Junta pro Semana Santa and paid for with your contributions, placed in the urn, which turns a century this year, is taken with great sacrifice through the streets and squares of the town.

I was next to the cross

The mother of beautiful grace

afflicted and painful

Watching Jesus pending,

La Dolorosa, closes the funeral procession, accompanied by the brotherhoods of the new brotherhood of Our Lady of Sorrows, created in 2007 as an initiative of a group of women to venerate the Virgin and maintain our weekly traditions.

- On Holy Saturday, a day of silence and reflection, to accompany María in her Soledad through the streets of the town at nightfall . The sweetest of the three images of Mary that participate in our parades, in a procession promoted by Don Camilo in 1959.

 The rows of women in mourning with their lanterns and candles, intoning the monotonous sounds of the Rosary:

God Hail Hail Mary Full of grace….

It is etched in my childhood memories. The procession ends with an emotional Salve as they enter the church.

- On Easter Sunday, the joy of celebrating the Resurrection of Jesus, the central mystery of Christianity, leaves behind the days of mourning and sadness, and renews our hope in our own resurrection.

Risen Risen Risen Hallelujah

María meets again in the Plaza Mayor with her resurrected son, represented by the Virgen del Carmen, who had her own brotherhood in the church of San Martín, and El Salvador, the titular image of the old parish of the same name.

And I return joyfully to the church, this house that welcomes everyone, to celebrate the presence of the living Christ.

And I end my proclamation by encouraging everyone to actively participate in the processions and liturgical services of our Holy Week, maintaining the traditions that our ancestors passed on to us so that they can be passed on to future generations.

April 13, 2014, Villafáfila.

And do not forget to visit the magnificent Exhibition of Photographs of pigeon houses, which thanks to the initiative of José Luis are exhibited in the City Hall.

We go to the auction.

Author:

Jose Luis Dominguez Martinez.

Text:

Mr. Elías Rodríguez Rodríguez.

Town crier of Holy Week 2014.

Photography:

Jose Luis Dominguez Martinez.

Transcription and montage:

Jose Luis Dominguez Martinez.

All text, photographs, transcription and montage, their rights belong to their authors, any type of use is prohibited without authorization.

All text and photography has been authorized for storage, treatment, work, transcription and assembly to José Luis Domínguez Martínez, its dissemination on villafafila.net, and any other means that is authorized.