Back in Rioseco, what everyone expected happened: the footsteps took to the streets. However, although for the visitor it may seem like a repetitive and inconsequential event, year after year the people of Rio de Janeiro renew the tradition with a strange singularity that turns each Holy Week into a different event.
Each year the brothers who carry the paso are new, as well as the butler, each year a new brother joins the brotherhood and others die, leaving their mark on the immortal memory of the brotherhood, each year, the event of the procession will hold some special event that many years later the older ones will remember at the brotherhood dinners in the interest of the younger ones. Every year the steps with their artistic images renew the millennial history of the Nazarene.
However, the rain that fell throughout the morning, which at times turned into sleet and hail, made the people of Rio de Janeiro hopelessly think that the procession would not see the light of the street for another year. An omen that did not come true in the end, the sun rose in the afternoon and the sky allowed the ten steps to leave in procession from the church of Santiago.
The parade of the guilds that are going to carry the steps led to the solemn Mass, a prelude to the beginning of the procession. At that time, thousands of people already filled the streets of Rio de Janeiro.
Describing the procession on Maundy Thursday in Rioseco is recounting the emotion of hundreds of moments and instants that remain etched in the retina of the spectator who approaches the old City of Admirals. The slowness of the steps leaving the door of the church of Santiago, the father who is moved to see his son struggling under “the board”, the weak flame of the lanterns that illuminate the images of the Passion in a row, the dance of the steps in Calle Mayor, the shadow of a Nazarene reflected in the colossal portal of the church of Santa Cruz, the kneeling of the steps in front of the Virgen de la Cruz in the Gothic arch of Ajujar and again in the church of Santiago, to, in silence, sing the Hail to the Virgin of La Dolorosa.
The best Castilian imagery
Ten pasos carried on the shoulders of brothers in purple and black velvet tunics and black Castilian cloth took part in the procession. Steps in which some carvings that belong to the best Castilian imagery of the 17th century stand out. ‘The Prayer in the Garden’, ‘The Flagellation’, ‘Jesus Tied to the Column’, ‘Ecce-Homo’, ‘Jesús Nazareno de Santiago’, ‘La Santa Verónica’, ‘Jesús Nazareno de Santa Cruz’, ‘La Nudez ‘, ‘Santo Cristo de la Pasión’ and ‘La Dolorosa’, make up the total number of steps that precessed yesterday.
The current procession on Holy Thursday is the result of the union in 1959 of the one that existed on this same day, which also started from the church of Santiago, with the one that was held on Good Friday morning, which did so from the church of Santa Cruz. . These processions, as told by Ramón Pérez and Virginia Asensio in their magnificent study on Holy Week in Rio de Janeiro, originally corresponded to the historical brotherhoods of Vera Cruz and La Pasión and which in the 19th century, due to a process of transformations, led to the current brotherhoods, originally some related to guild brotherhoods.
Also this Holy Thursday, starting at 8:00 p.m., the Procession of Pain was held. Long before the processions began, in Rioseco one could already guess what was going to happen. It is as if its hundred-year-old streets had a strange and secret memory that whispered in the ear of the people who walked through them all the magic of what was to happen hours later.
trumpets and drums
Since early afternoon the sound of trumpets and drums came from other streets like the noise of a distant dream. People crowded into the arcades next to the ancient wooden posts to watch the guilds pass by in black and purple tunics in a rite that is lost in the distance of time.
So, what was expected happened. The footsteps went from the church to the street, from the religious to the popular, from silence to the most human bustle, from memory to reality, from tradition to the past, from stillness to movement, from theory to practice, from reason to myth, from months of waiting to the precise moment. One more year, the street became that long and narrow stage to tell the millennial story of the Nazarene.
butler pride
The day has arrived. It seemed like it would never happen. José Fernández Abril entered the brotherhood with a little more than ten years “signed up” by his maternal grandfather, José Abril, in that transcendental generational succession of Holy Week in Rio de Janeiro. In his particular history as a brother, 2016 will be a year to remember; At 67 years old, he has the honor of being a butler.
In his house, together with his three children, Yolanda, Mónica and José Miguel, all three of the Nazarene; his father, Miguel; his mother-in-law, Engracia, 92 years old, with seven decades of Nazarene; his granddaughters, Lucía, Luna and Alba, the first two of the brotherhood; and ten of his eleven siblings and other relatives, wait nervously for his dear brother brothers of the Nazarene from Santiago to arrive, from whom he will receive the most sincere congratulations in that very familiar and Rio de Janeiro act that is the refreshment, in which the butler He acts as a host in an invitation in which there is no lack of coffee, liquors and pastries.
Emotions follow. The older brothers, bearers of wisdom, bring experiences and anecdotes from other times to the present for the attention of the younger ones. In the background the tapetán sounds, played, especially by the little ones, but also by those who were one day and still retains the popular blows on the black cloth drum.
It is his day, that of José Fernández, especially if we take into account that this year the Nazarene of Santiago celebrates the centenary of its reorganization. The Pardal sounds, the brothers of the Nazarene and La Verónica begin the parade of guilds on Holy Thursday in Rioseco. It will be an afternoon of great emotions.
