Alex Lucas Lopez

 

The stretcher table.

He had made an appointment with a person, to ask about another, someone already deceased to do an article, and I ended up taking a trip to unexpected houses. And it happened like so many other times: "Let's go see my aunt, she'll remember it better!" Or "Let's visit So-and-so, in case she keeps any photos!"

So I quickly gather my belongings: the notebook, the pen, the camera, the recorder. I go out behind my companion, who at that moment becomes my herald and Cicero, and I direct my steps to the area of the old town of Cieza, to alleys whose existence I am unaware of, to corners where he tells me anecdotes: At this point there were all before going to the Church to remove the throne. In this place there was a bar where they would meet afterwards to talk about how to improve the organization. So Cieza is not Cieza, it is Jerusalem reincarnated in Holy Week each year, a reincarnation based on the fact that urban geography is transformed to serve solely and exclusively as a stage for processions, the streets of Cieza are useless on those dates of calendar.

We reached the portal, which is usually that of a low house, a house with a long back, with a fireplace, with a patio full of potted geraniums through which the sun shines.

- Tita, do you remember? says my companion.

A cascading, ancient, resigned laugh then sounds. The interlocutor scrutinizes me, looks me in the eye, x-rays me with her ancient knowledge. In those first contacts I always shrug my shoulders, give a half smile of commitment and, for all explanation, to justify why a stranger breaks into his house, why they are going to record their conversation, why they ask for old photos and want to take even more photos… for all explanation, I say:

-It's for El Anda.

Like a balm to the wound, then the situation relaxes, tempers are tempered, shyness is overcome, and the voice of memory begins to speak.

-Come to the stretcher table. Well... that must have been more or less... hand me that photo, baby! Let's see if the date is behind it.

 

The call.

With slight exceptions, situations like this have occurred to me frequently since I have had the pleasure of collaborating with El Anda. And those who have perhaps been suspicious of why nobody asks questions and removes the past, always ended up satisfied with the work because they never seek to argue but rather to remember, never confrontation but rather what unites us, Easter.

All this always begins with a call, a call that takes place when the cold begins to make timid approaches, when the Murcian autumn begins to believe in itself:

Hi Alejo, I'm Enrique Centeno.

It is an expected appointment. We wouldn't have met since Easter, for sure. We asked each other politely about our state and that of our families. Then he told me:

-We already have chosen the person we would like you to write about.

He is a member of the El Anda Commission, in charge of promoting the annual miracle that is the magazine. Like other commissions of the Board of Brotherhoods, you only see a small part of the great effort and work they do throughout the year.

With this simple ritual of his call, a small great adventure began for me: to visualize a little more the footprint of our biggest week.

My aspiration was to write a brief biographical review and collect photos of an important figure for the ciezan processions, someone who had died a short time ago, or sometimes a long time ago, but who deserved to be remembered by the rest of the brothers.

The first time I participated with them, they realized that I did not understand the concept of brief very well. Rather, I was very extensive, so much so that those reviewed in other published works complained because my article was very long, and theirs were very short, as if there was a relationship between length and importance, which there was not. The problem was mine, that I have a fondness for letters, for which, I confess, I did not apply the brief. I'm not going to be now, notice.