Valencia (EFE).- Thousands of Valencians have accompanied the Virgen de los Desamparados this Sunday in the traditional “missa d’infants” and the subsequent transfer of her image from the Basilica to the Cathedral, acts that this year coincide with the centenary of his coronation.
At 8 in the morning, the “mass for infants” took place at the doors of the Basilica, celebrated by the Archbishop of Valencia, Enrique Benavent, who has asked to keep alive “that faith that acts through charity” in order to ” bring to the world the hope that is so badly needed”.
After the homily, the massive transfer of the Virgin from the Basilica to the Cathedral took place, an act that is celebrated on the second Sunday of May and that this year culminates a weekend dedicated to commemorating the centenary of her coronation.
The good weather and the absence of rain have marked the celebration of this event, in which thousands of Valencians have shown the devotion they feel for their patron saint.
The image of the Virgin has been dressed in the cloak resulting from the initiative “A little of many”, promoted by numerous Valencian cultural and civic entities.
The cloak has been woven, made and embroidered in recent months by Valencian artisans and anonymous devotees who have joined the initiative with their donations as part of a campaign that began last year to involve the entire Valencian society in the celebration of this centenary.
Political prominence also in the Virgin
The acts coincide this year in the middle of the electoral campaign, and have had the presence of politicians, such as the mayor of Valencia and Compromís candidate for re-election, Joan Ribó, who has not attended the mass but did attend the transfer; the deputy mayor of the city and PSPV candidate for mayor, Sandra Gómez, or the PP candidates for the Generalitat and mayor, Carlos Mazón and María José Català.
Sandra Gómez has proposed, if she is mayor, that the celebration of the Day of the Virgen de los Desamparados have its own poster that reminds the arrival of the festival to the Valencians, as it happens with the Fallas, the Corpus Christi or the Semana Santa Marinera.
It has advanced that it will also promote the collaboration of the City Council with the Church to decentralize the festival and that the celebrations can reach all the neighborhoods, and has vindicated the role of a mayoress who “is present in the most important places and moments for her neighbors and neighbors”.
Gómez has also criticized the continuous attempts to appropriate the city’s festivities by the right, and has warned that “this celebration belongs to all Valencians regardless of what they think or what they vote for in these elections” .
Commitment to traditions “not only at election time”
For her part, the PP candidate for mayor, María José Catalá, has defended that the commitment to the traditions of the Valencian people “goes through a permanent institutional presence and not only at electoral time.”
In this sense, he has reproached the mayor for eight years having been “absent in all these celebrations”, and appearing “just in an election year”, which he believes “has not been the best of Mr. Ribó’s ideas”.
Carlos Mazón, for his part, has accused the president of the Generalitat and socialist candidate for re-election, Ximo Puig, of having “betrayed the Valencian identity”, and has announced that if he is able to form a government, he will implement a Law of Signs of Identity.
The Councilor for Festive Culture, Pere Fuset, recalled that the Virgin “belongs to no one” and “cannot be used from disrespect as if it were an electoral weapon”, and has asked the parties to present their campaign proposals “without the need to use to divide what it is intended to unite.
He has affirmed that the Valencia City Council has been “up to the task” in the celebration of the centenary of the coronation of the Virgin, and has defended that the mayor “has fulfilled his institutional role on such a special occasion” like this.
The entry Thousands of Valencians clothe the Virgin during her traditional transfer was first published in EFE Noticias.