Pilar Mazo
Logroño, (EFE).- Cintia Martínez has been the bearer of the Nuestra Señora del Rosario pass for five years, carried exclusively by women on their shoulders and, although this year she will be the foreman, she continues to lose the feeling that lives on in each one her companions: “carrying our Virgin on your shoulders is something to experience”.
This was recounted in an interview with EFE this Tuesday, a few hours before the departure in procession of this step, which has been guarded since 2008 by the Brotherhood of the Santa Cruz de los Hermanos Maristas de Logroño and which will be accompanied on Saturday Mater, also from this group, created in 1991 and made up of two hundred members.
“For us, taking this step is a source of pride and something very special. For some, an offering; for others, a penance; but, for all, love for our Virgin and a very deep religious feeling, which we look forward to with great enthusiasm ”, he recounted.
About twenty women, between the ages of 18 and 58, will lift on their shoulders a throne that weighs about 500 kilos, which are distributed at a rate of between 20 and 25 kilos each and that “we hold well throughout the procession”, which runs through the old town of the city.
“It is a feeling that we look forward to throughout the year and with emotions running high,” he insisted.
They rehearse for two months carrying the step and most of them are workers, of different profiles and professions, who every Sunday, since March, go to the Maristas school and practice so that their Virgin of the Rosary goes out tonight on Holy Tuesday in procession, in a tradition that some of them have maintained for 12 to 14 years.
The Virgin, more beautiful than ever
This image came out for the first time in a procession carried by women in 2008, to whom “the pride” of carrying this size and their “religious sentiment, faith, friendship and camaraderie” keeps them together all year long, since it is a Virgin which is part of the collegial life of the Marist Brothers.
Women from other brotherhoods who are devoted to the Virgen del Rosario and who will take turns at the time of procession have joined the brotherhoods that usually carry the procession, the older brother of the Brotherhood of the Holy Cross, Enrique Guerrero, explained to EFE. .
This year, he specified, “the Virgin is going to come out prettier than ever”, with more belongings and three embroidered violets, alluding to the virtues that work in the Brotherhood linked to the Marist Brothers: modesty, humility and simplicity, and that a new member of this group has donated, who already donated a mantilla to the image a few years ago.
The carving, by the Andalusian sculptor Manuel Madroñal Isorna, is a dress image, made of polychrome cedar wood and painted in oil, whose black cloak, with which he goes in procession this Tuesday, is embroidered with gold thread, the work of some nuns from the Sevillian town of Coria del Río.
The incorporation of this new step in 2008 means for the Brotherhood of the Holy Cross to fulfill the desire to have one dedicated exclusively to the Virgin because of “our Marist character”, explained Guerrero.
It has also highlighted the feminine devotion that there is for carrying this Virgin, which is why every year there are more women who request it and, although those belonging to the Holy Cross always have to be the majority, it is allowed that someone from another brotherhood can carry it.
In addition, there are three women who are among the 34 or 35 bearers of the Sabat Mater pass, weighing 1,200 kilos and who, in addition to Holy Tuesday, procession on Good Friday, during the central procession of Holy Week in Logroño, declared of National Tourist Interest. .
After the procession on Holy Tuesday, in which the music band of this Brotherhood also participates, the Virgen del Rosario will be in procession again in October, on the Sunday closest to her festivity, as happened last year, when a representative of the Military Emergency Unit (UME) attended this procession, as this Virgin is the patron saint of this military corps. EFE.