First shot. Resurrected

For the Macarenos and the Sevillians, Juan Manuel’s Virgin of Hope was just a sepia photo or the lid of a can of quinces. This young Macarena who showed all the expressiveness of her face without anything superfluous … The fact that it distracted him was the best version of a painful problem that, over the years, acquired the imprint that his locker room gave him. After many years of longing for this Virgin, on Thursday, her saint’s day, we find her in San Gil as Lorca, or Joselito, saw her: sublime, close, enveloped in the golden atmosphere that offers her adequate light and the reflection of the cult altar of the Rosario de Carrión. Virgo catches you. He won’t let you go.

She wore the Arco skirt, the shrimp coat, the diamond headdress, the low mariquillas, the dagger that Miguel Carrasco had made for her with his best jewelry – the Banús clips and a Cartier – and the Muñoz y Pavón pen tied around her waist. How many orchards and barracks in the Encarnación Market would not have this photo of the Virgin!

Everything was possible thanks to the will of the new board of directors of Fernández Cabezuelo, to a team of shameless priests and to the new locker room, José Carlos Gutiérrez, who for this alone has already earned a place in the Olympus of geniuses of the Macarena. Wearable art is not a frivolous aspect, even if there are those who frivolate it. It is about fulfilling the task of the image maker and not replacing him, as so often happens. The Macarena is back. And today, when winter begins, Hope, in her Easter, has given us back spring. How wonderful!