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He had a special devotion to the Virgin of the Star. Since I was a child, but more, if possible, since a condition in the larynx at the age of 15 almost left her speechless: the cure came after prayers. Rocío Vega Farfán, La Niña de la Alfalfa, as she was known, was a saetera from Santiponce, where Roman vestiges rest at the gates of Seville, who also performed opera and zarzuela. He cultivated a folkloric saeta, with a lyrical voice and prodigious ability, to measure himself against the main figures of this genre that took shape in different ways in many towns and cities of Andalusia and Spain, such as Jerez and Marchena, but which took on another dimension in Hispalis, where the voices of reference met at the height of the cattails, no longer from the ground.
The king Alfonso XIIIListening to her, he asked to meet her in person and proclaimed her in writing as the Queen of the Saeta. She was, therefore, one of the leading throats of Holy Week during the 20th century. This 2022 marks the 90th anniversary of her most remembered prayer. The one who preceded the shots to the Virgin.
It all happened on Holy Thursday of 1932. After the proclamation of the Second Republic, none of the Sevillian brotherhoods decided to carry out a penance station (this also happened in other municipalities) with one exception: La Estrella, from Triana. He took to the street in the direction of the cathedral in a climate of enormous strangeness. Isidoro Moreno, in the work ‘Holy Week in Seville’, points out what the liberal media denounced at the time. Besides the feeling of insecuritythe widespread decline of brotherhoods was used as a weapon of political pressure by the right.
In one way or another, since then, that image has been known as La Valiente. And he sang to La Valiente La Niña de la Alfalfa that Thursday far from these lines, in front of the facade of the town hall and in the presence of the authorities, a memorable lyric: “It has been said on the blue bench/that Spain is no longer Christian/and even if it is Republican/you are the boss here/Morning Star.” No flags, no ideologies, no government systems: You, the only one on the street, in charge. They hadn’t damaged her yet.
Stripped of jewelry, for what might happen, she walked through the town center amid cheers and spontaneous whistles. They sang to him, as we see, saetas, in addition to some “Long live libertarian communism!” and others “Long live Catholic and Marian Seville!”, as recorded in the chronicles of the time. By Sierpes they threw a stone at Christ, with subsequent arrest of the aggressor and attempted lynching. In the Plaza de San Francisco, immediately after, the prayer made music of the Niña de la Alfalfa embraced the canopy, all surrounded by anguish from the start. Tension scratched the air of a city that has always boasted of spring. Everything was uncomfortable, until the most serious events occurred on his return to the temple.
With the first step of the brotherhood already in the church, some rockets broke the mantle of the Virgin as he entered the house, in the presence of the most devout. shots rang out. And the crowd, imagine, became an amalgamation of nerve and mass. A 22-year-old carpenter, Emiliano González Sánchez, who had in his possession a 6.35-caliber pistol and two magazines, tried to flee before being arrested and responding with more shots at the security forces, without injuring anyone. It was never proven, however, that he was the aggressor of the Star, although he was in prison for more than four years and, some time later, he was once again linked to the events.
La Niña sang to La Valiente that day a saeta full of circumstances. He was young, just over 30 years old. He was close to fullness and he still had several decades of reign on the balcony, sharing fame with figures such as El Niño Gloria, Manuel Centeno, Manuel Vallejo and La Niña de los Peines. He too, in his early days, coincided with Manuel Torre and Niño de Medina, other posh singers. He died in July 1975, after years of happiness, two republics, a war and a dictatorship that he could see diminishbut not finish. She left, yes, the sound memory of her on the cobblestones. Even more so when 90 years of bravery are commemorated.
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