The Sevillian Álvaro Maroto has been a brother since he can remember.
He could have been content with being a brother of the Star, where he was enrolled since he was born, but he wanted more.
Back in 2009, when he was 16 years old, he had the idea of starting a brotherhood in Seville East, a neighborhood on the outskirts of the capital with more than 60,000 residents.
He knocked on the doors of three parishes without success, so he decided to go down the middle street.
“Because three parish priests do not want to, there is no reason for the neighborhood to remain without brotherhoods with the number of brothers there are.
There will already be someone who loves us,” reflected the current president of the Consuelo y Esperanza civil association.
They continue in those and they are not the only ones.
For more than a decade, Andalusia has been experiencing an emergence of civil associations with brothers, steps and images, but without priests.
They grow exponentially outside the Church while trying to shake off the ridicule that devalues them as “pirates.”
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Andalusian Holy Week can also (and tries to) be dissident
The fifth Saturday of Lent, last March 16, was the thermometer of the rise of these civil associations in Seville, the epicenter of the movement.
The sidewalks and balconies of the San Bernardo neighborhood were filled with Sevillians and foreigners to see Abnegación, one of the leaders of the phenomenon of civil associations.
In the procession there were brotherly belongings, an imposing step of mystery and a flashy musical group, the Virgin of the Kings.
The only thing that was out of place in the picture is that the brothers who made up the procession did not wear the habit of a Nazarene and that the route did not start from a parish.
“Maybe we are starting with the house, but if everything is growing it is because the Church and the brotherhoods are not welcoming us as they should.
Abnegación was born because they did not welcome us, otherwise we would not exist,” reflects its president, Javier Gámez Villar.
This lack of shelter that Maroto and Gámez allege is one of the “multiple factors” that Francisco Javier Escalera, professor of Social Anthropology at the Pablo de Olavide University, finds in the origin and roots of civil associations.
Many of the entities, as happened with Abnegación in 1992, emerged from a children's May cross that wanted to have images to venerate and social charity projects to develop.
“They are born when they go to their parishes and show a need that is not answered for various reasons,” reflects Cristóbal M. Calvo, president of the civil Salud y Esperanza and the Fecosevilla federation, which includes up to ten of these entities.
But Escalera identifies more reasons.
The place where they have become strong is not coincidental, the majority germinated in suburban neighborhoods in which there were no brotherhoods and in which these corporations have become “the way to strengthen the sense of belonging and identity,” as pointed out Escalera, who plans to carry out academic research on a phenomenon to be studied, but which, in Seville alone, already has about 20 groups and moves “between 15,000 and 20,000 people,” according to Calvo's estimate.
It is not the only gap that civil entities have come to fill.
The professor believes that they have also penetrated the popular neighborhoods as a reaction “to the strengthening of the ecclesiastical hierarchy to exercise greater control over the brotherhoods,” especially of their accounts and of those who participate in the management of these brotherhoods.
Divorced or visible and married LGTBI people, in short “people who have not followed the
cursus honorum
of Catholic membership,” as Escalona points out, can be at the top of civil associations without “no one looking over their shoulder.” as Gámez confirms.
“It is not that we are more or less lax, it is that we do not have the
over-supervision
that the brotherhoods have,” says Calvo, who assures that this control has been caused, on occasions, by the lack of training of some of these brotherhoods.
But the diocesan delegate of Brotherhoods and Brotherhoods of Seville, the priest Marcelino Manzano, does not believe that the origin of the civil ones is in a stricter ecclesiastical control of the religious ones.
He points out that civil associations arise “out of ignorance or because they do not fit into the parish community” and defends orthodoxy in the brotherhoods: “They require a demanding training process because the reality of a brotherhood is what it is.”
And he adds: “Even respecting the good actions that [the civil ones] carry out, they lead to the confusion of the faithful.”
Hence, the Archbishopric has initiated a policy of approaching civil groups to try to lead them on the long path towards their conversion as brotherhood, a process that requires first becoming groups, in which the maximum leader is the parish priest of the church that will be their headquarters, and which ends when they are erected as brotherhoods, under the umbrella of religious associations of public worship.
The majority of civil associations have taken up the gauntlet with interest, Calvo summarizes: “They all fight for integration in their parish because they continue to be a pastoral tool.”
Although others do not seem so willing, as Manzano points out: "There are those who are in dialogue with me, but for others I only have news through the media."
Among the first was Consuelo y Esperanza, who became integrated into the parish of the Assumption of Seville East for eight years.
“They confirmed the 170 brothers, they gave us continuous formation, we cleaned the church, we were catechists,” recalls Maroto.
They were also told that neither married nor divorced homosexuals could be on the board.
"Because?
If they work more than others,” the president asks, annoyed.
Despite this, they complied with the rule and blessed the carvings of Christ and the Virgin.
Until the parish priest changed and, at the end of November 2023, decided to extinguish the already group of faithful and expel the images, which have once again received worship in a private oratory, like most civil associations.
“Now, we are in limbo,” Maroto acknowledges.
Our Blessed Headlines enter their oratory.
The opening date will be announced soon.
pic.twitter.com/iOauJPQRhI
— El Consuelo (@ConsueloSevEste) January 29, 2024
“The ecclesiastical authority feels very bad about this whole phenomenon [...] It is nothing more than the breaking of the monopoly on Catholic symbols.
The Church should not have control over whether people can worship divine entities,” Escalera reflects.
In fact, although the dioceses try to put restrictions in place, they hardly succeed and the movement of civil associations is already present in towns with strong brotherhood roots, such as Jerez de la Frontera.
Last September, the capital also arrived in Cádiz with the departure of the Group of Faithful of María Santísima de la Consolación, which aroused angry complaints from the city's Council of Brotherhoods and Brotherhoods.
“We are called illegal or pirates because we are not under ecclesiastical protection, but civil associations are totally legal.
We make use of the constitutional right of religious freedom,” explains Calvo.
That is why Escalera believes that the movement can give more of itself and will grow, especially because it does not see rejection in society as a whole, in this case in Seville, only in the most orthodox sectors: “They treat them as if they were second-rate division of football [...] But this is not something for four fools.
Holy Week, despite secularism, is a deeply popular phenomenon, linked to aesthetics and the way of understanding sociability."
Let them tell Maroto and his team, to whom the latest setback has not diminished even an iota of desire.
15 years later they relive again that refusal that led them to found Consuelo y Esperanza, but being intimidated is not part of their plans.
“No one is going to stop us, no matter how much a priest throws us out,” he warns combatively.
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