Carlos González, a young Sevillian 'influencer' on social networks with the 'Arco del Postigo' account. PACO PUENTES
Eight years ago, Carlos González Álvarez (Seville, 27 years old) used his personal Twitter account "as a storehouse of brotherly photos."
"It was a most naive use, but it helped me to see them again without taking up space on my mobile," he tells EL PAÍS.
A short time ago, while still a teenager, he had moved to Ceuta, where his family is from.
Although he came and went relatively frequently, his passion for Holy Week in Seville began to take on another meaning: “I was surprised that people he didn't know began to react to those images.
So I thought about opening a profile to share only that type of content.”
The name was clear to him “since he was little”, when he saw a passage of the Baratillo brotherhood through the Arco del Postigo, one of the only three entrances that are preserved from the old walls of Seville, together with the Puerta de la Macarena and the Cordoba Gate.
And Arco del Postigo is the name of the network profile that has taken a brother moment the furthest.
He has done it thanks to the video of a costaleros rehearsal with the heaviest Sevillian canopy, that of La Concepción.
“I have never experienced anything similar with other platforms.
This clip has reached all the countries of Latin America and they have written to me from almost all (more than 3,000 comments and 213,000 likes only in this video with more than eight million views).
In some way, this impact rewards a job that I would have continued to do with or without these results, although fortunately today I can say that it is my job”, adds González, who is self-taught.
Poster of Carlos González. PACO PUENTES
Although TikTok is the only platform that pays him, the work the influencer refers to combines his online creativity with face-to-face sales to the public at the Inciensos de Sevilla store: “They contacted me because of my content.
Now I apply my strategies to their profiles and we are growing very fast, but I also have an office at the Águilas street store and we go to all the fairs”, he points out.
Inciensos de Sevilla is a highly specialized business that serves more than 200 brotherhoods throughout Spain, sells to individuals and has almost 40,000 followers on different networks, now managed by González.
His store in the center of Seville has become the distribution point for the posters and stamps that Arco del Postigo has been creating for years to promote itself.
“This year I have printed 7,000 posters and they have flown.
It is exciting to see how people line up to take it away and it is part of the baggage of this time in which I have learned so much about how to energize the public, with contests, gifts, but also with physical presence, with these posters and with the presence in celebrations and fairs throughout Andalusia”.
The dream of living off the networks in a niche as specific as Holy Week has allowed him to return to live in Seville.
"The formula," according to her, "has been to relearn every time I got stuck."
After a few years of great growth on Twitter, she made the leap to Instagram where he doubled his audience;
however, TikTok is being the one that, in a few months, "is adding more public and more diversity to me."
The big jump
A jump that he sensed when he saw his little brothers “in there all day”.
"Because if there is something decisive when you have such a specific theme in networks, it is to position yourself at the beginning," she indicates.
Once again, the photos and videos of him have been adapted to a language different from that of the other networks.
His influence, in short, has not stopped growing and invitations from brotherhoods inside and outside Andalusia accumulate to promote themselves from their profiles.
What began more or less naively today has turned him into a professional around his greatest hobby: "I continue to train with all kinds of online courses for video, photo, positioning, but I also do not stop reading to obtain every time more vocabulary, more baggage of knowledge regarding Holy Week.
There is a certain self-demand, but it is a subject that I am passionate about and I never get tired of knowing more”.
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