Pregon Holy Week Villafáfila 2018, Mr. Jesús Justo Figuera

I am very pleased to be before you and to be able to remember past times in this town of mine, which although I have lived abroad for a long time, I have never forgotten and I have always wanted to return to it to be with my family, friends and with all of you.

I remember Holy Week as days of devotion, mystery, reflection and long days of fasting, and that stew of chickpeas with rice, cod with potatoes, fried mackerel and marinade with olives, onion and paprika, were dishes that were never lacking.

Also, the long processions with that silence that was only broken by the different religious songs (He forgives your people, Lord, and He doesn't be eternally angry) or the sound of the trumpet.

At that time when we boys and girls, placed behind the cross and the candles, went at the head of the procession perfectly differentiated in two rows, our teachers controlled that none of us deviated, followed by the women surrounding the images and finally, the men.

At that time, Villafáfila had more than fifteen hundred residents and therefore the processions were much more numerous and they were lived in a different way than today.

Each procession expressed something particular that differentiated it from the rest, sometimes the steps and their solemnity and others, simply the feeling of each one, since there were people who went barefoot for some offering.

Holy Week begins with Palm Sunday, the triumphal entry of the Lord into Jerusalem and the traditional collection of laurel branches. A Sunday designated to release some garment.

Starting on Tuesday, I remember the preachers who, up in the pulpit, gave those sermons with such eloquence about the Lord's passion and death, that they made us feel as if we were living it in our own flesh.

I remember the authorities sitting on one side, in the front pews, the boys on one side and the girls on the other, the women in the center sitting or kneeling on their pews and the men in the back of the church, no one missed a word of these sermons.

One of them is the procession of silence that goes out on Wednesday night, recovered by a group of men.

On Thursday afternoon, the Ecce Homo procession takes place, which is the longest in which we sang asking the Lord for forgiveness for what he was made to suffer. With the song of forgive your people sir.

Another recovered is the one that leaves this same day at 11 at night, that of Veracruz carried by men and women dressed in traditional Castilian capes, a procession that I have attended and I liked it because of how different it is, both for the time as by its layers and its route to the old cemetery, where La Ermita de la Veracruz was in the past.

The procession that brings back the greatest memories for me is that of the Meeting on Friday morning, with that preacher on the balcony of Mr. Gabriel Ruiz (Pajarote rip) today self-service Isabel , who with his powerful voice could be heard throughout the square, from the one from the clock to the corner of Lavapiés street, where San Juan was waiting for the preacher to cry out “Run Juan, run to see Maria”. This race attracted all the eyes of the public, pending a few missteps, by the young people who carried the saint. Well, not infrequently there was an accident in which the saint and the porters ended up rolling on the ground.

We always attended this procession with a bad face and worse body, because we had spent the night without sleeping.

The procession on Friday afternoon or the Holy Burial was the longest because of how slowly it went, since the Urn is the heaviest image, in this dead Jesus is escorted by the two virgins, the Angustias and the Painful representing the Anguish and Pain that Mary felt for her son.

The procession that most impressed me was the one on Saturday night, that of Soledad, because it was very illuminated, with those two long lines of women dressed in black, carrying candles or lanterns.

The gloom and silence, the songs that implored forgiveness and repentance, enveloped the entire town in an atmosphere of devotion and mystery, was something that distressed me.

I remember that the children went from one corner to another to see her go by, and blow out a candle if we could.

We end Holy Week with the procession on Resurrection Sunday or Easter in which the Risen Jesus meets Mary in the Plaza Mayor.

At that time, our greatest wish was to bid for the trumpet, and thus be able to have a tunic throughout Holy Week and keep our faces covered so that they would not recognize us .

I remember that Don Camilo told us that we had to take good care of it because if we broke it we had to pay for it, because it had to last for all years.

When we were a bit older, we tried to take San Juan, since it was the one that weighed the least, and so every year we tried to take one of the Pasos that weighed a little more.

In those days we had our lemonades, because they weren't called peñas like today, where we made the lemonade, which we prepared only with wine, sugar and lemon essence, we made this on a day like today so that it rested and was better that way, back then it was our only drink, only accompanied by some sweets that our mothers made us.

When we were still too young to make lemonade, we used to go to the older ones to try it and they always told us the same thing: you are too young to drink

I suppose that many of you will remember the night of Holy Thursday, when we made chocolate with those churros that we all tried to make and that usually, or almost never turned out well, because the dough sometimes came out hard, another soft, another bland, another salty, Total that we rarely managed to eat a churro that was decently good.

During that night we toured the other lemonades to see if any of them had made the churros edible, which rarely happened.

Obviously for many of us, making that first lemonade and spending our first night with friends is something that is never forgotten.

These Lemonades or rocks that were only made at Easter, were the embryo of the rocks that are currently in the summer festival, San Roque.

With this I want to end by asking the Lord for the best for everyone and I thank you for the attention you have given me and I wish that we spend a happy Easter.

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