The Romería de la Santa Faz de Alicante, which usually gathers more than 300,000 pilgrims, shows two different facets each year. On one hand, there is the official, liturgical, and ceremonial aspect: the visit to the relic considered a piece of the cloth with which Veronica wiped the face of Jesus during the Calvary. On the other hand, there is the social, pagan, and festive side, which brings together the people of Alicante on the day that welcomes spring and good weather. The Peregrina, as it is known in the city, thus unites the entire society, which is why the absence of Carlos Mazón last year, then still president of the Generalitat, received no defense. His successor in office, Juanfran Pérez Llorca, has tried today to remedy the grievance and has announced that the Consell will declare the second most attended romería in Spain, after the Rocío, as an Intangible Cultural Heritage (BIC).
The pilgrimage starts every second Thursday after Easter Sunday from the co-cathedral of San Nicolás de Alicante and covers 7.5 kilometers on foot to reach the Monastery of the Santa Faz, where the relic is kept. The tradition began in 1489 as a prayer for rain during a prolonged drought. A mass and a fair are the main events for the pilgrims who decide to follow the official program, while many others take the opportunity to eat the mona in the countryside or on the beaches. The festivity also gathers a large part of the political leaders of the Valencian Community, who in this edition have also shown a well-marked duality. On one side are those from the PP, like Pérez Llorca or the mayor of Alicante, Luis Barcala, who have limited their statements to the media to today’s celebration.
The head of the Consell, whose predecessor, Mazón, preferred last year to travel to New York to avoid the crowds that criticized his behavior during the Dana of Valencia, has announced the BIC declaration, on the third attempt after those of 2002 and 2016, and has pointed out that with it, the Peregrina “will have much more recognition, more protection, and more help from Valencian institutions.” With one move, he has dodged the rest of the current affairs. “Today is not the day,” he said, “we have many days for political assessment and to throw insults at each other, unfortunately.” Barcala also did not want to get involved. “Whoever focuses on another issue, does not know why they came.” Highly questioned even by his Vox partners in the City Council, due to the scandal of the public protection housing (VPP) of Les Naus, many of them assigned to people linked to the municipal PP, the Alicante mayor has preferred to focus on the declaration of the romería as BIC. In his opinion, it is “a recognition after hundreds of years of devotion to one of the greatest demonstrations and one of our identity marks.”
On the other side, the opposition has taken advantage of the journalists’ attention to highlight the controversies related to the Popular Party. The Minister of Science, Innovation and Universities, Diana Morant, began by supporting the Consell in recognizing the Romería de la Santa Faz. Then, she again demanded the resignation of the mayor over the Les Naus case. In her opinion, the “regulatory change” decreed by Mazón and ratified by Pérez Llorca removes controls and allows the apartments, initially intended for people with difficulties accessing housing, to “practically be given away to people earning more than 4,000 euros.” Or who have a “PP card,” she claims. On the same issue, the PSPV secretary general has asked the vice president of the Consell, Susana Camarero, to take responsibility and allow “the homes to return to those who need them” and to promote the return of irregularly assigned apartments.
The deputy spokesperson of Compromís in the Valencian Courts, Aitana Mas, has also appeared, who considers the BIC announcement “a smile” at a time when “Alicante usually appears for bad news, associated with corruption.” Regarding the investigation into luxury VPPs, for which she has also requested Barcala’s resignation, Mas added the case of the trade vouchers that led to the arrest of the president of the Alicante Chamber of Commerce, Carlos Baño. In her opinion, in both cases, the Popular Party should be giving “explanations, instead of spending a month trying to find a case from another political party that resembles theirs.”
Outside the political sphere, the day, sunny, has passed without major incidents. The pilgrims, many of them dressed in black smocks and blue and white scarves, as the rules dictate, have participated in traditions such as the distribution of 15,000 rosemary canes or the paraeta halfway through the route, where anise rolls and glasses of mistela are handed out. A large security deployment has monitored alcohol consumption, as the authorities strive to keep the party 0.0, and two purple points have provided support to possible victims of sexual assault. Those who chose the official route attended the mass celebrated by the bishop of Orihuela-Alicante, José Ignacio Munilla, who dedicated his homily to condemning abortion. In his speech, the prelate from San Sebastián criticized the Government’s intention to include the right to abortion in the Constitution. “Politics tramples ethics,” he said. For Munilla, abortion can be compared to war: “Attacking the innocent is one of the deepest wounds that can be inflicted on Humanity,” he states, “there is no cause, particular interest, ideology, or strategy that justifies the elimination of those who cannot defend themselves.”
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