Beautiful Dolores!: The sissy and brother Andalusia

Anyone who was not born, or at least lived part of their life, in Andalusia understands that it is difficult for them to understand what Holy Week means. The sum of sensory experience, popular religiosity, inherited customs and shared public space make it a singular manifestation that, from my point of view, has many connections with the identity of a land characterized by mixtures and miscegenations. Because I think that in Holy Week there is a lot of that, emotional fusion, memories and divinities, beyond the Catholic label that tries to turn it into a kind of reactive flag in these bad times for the Church. There is even, in its profusion of Christs and virgins, and especially of virgins, a resistance of polytheism to being swallowed up by such a patriarchal and boring monotheism. It’s been a long, long time since I disassociated myself from everything religious that is in it and I stayed with the emotional and sensual that inhabits it. Even with the erotic that can be in its fragrances and in its projection towards all the senses. In recent years, moreover, I have experienced a certain weariness due to saturation and how the brotherhood movement distorts, to the point of exhaustion, what should never have forgotten its popular roots and should never have become an accomplice of a hierarchy in low hours.

The documentary “Dolores beautiful!” unravels one of those skeins that sustain the phenomenon of Holy Week and, although his gaze is focused on Seville, I understand that it could be transferred to any Andalusian city or town. Including the Córdoba in which I live and in which I often feel closer to the Middle Ages than to the 21st century when I contemplate how the Church tries to impose a unique and immovable story. Through priceless testimonies, the film explores how this mixed-race phenomenon has always been a universe in which LGBTI people have found a space for meeting and personal fulfillment, expression and liberation, especially in times when our whole society was one big closet. Precisely in this reality charged with emotions, corporality and sensory experiences, many dissident masculinities have found a kind of refuge and even a home. Almost a refuge against the inclemencies suffered outside – the testimony of the devotee of Dolores del Cerro is very moving – and a way of tying themselves to an identity in the face of a world from which they felt expelled. A shelter, in short, against the mandates of normality, which is nothing other than the regulations imposed by those who have power. Hence, for many “weird” children, this mix of art and devotion, of a colorful party and a collective ritual, has been and continues to be an opportunity to recognize each other (and to love each other). In this sense, there is a beautiful documentary pending about the childhoods of sissies and brothers. And about the mothers who sew cloaks and embroidery for their images. Virgin, Mother, Hope.

It is evident that Holy Week not only in Seville but in Andalusia as a whole would not be what it is without the participation and the sum of a group that the official Church, in a cruel paradox, continues to place on the margins. Let us remember that the shadow of disease and crime hung over this group for centuries, and what some identify as sin still persists. Hence, as we see on the screen, many opt for a direct dialogue with their religious references, outside of pulpits and cassocks, makers of a spirituality that is very close to the skin and feelings, deficiencies and daily doubts, in the one in which the gods and goddesses become a kind of comrade who accepts you and listens to you. All of this while the streets and squares, when that week arrives, which for so many is the best of the year, transform their daily lives and become the setting for a spectacular performance. Again, the clothes, the music, the colors, the excess. The city has almost become a huge venue run by drag queens, hustlers in tank tops, à la Querelle, and where children are not afraid to play with dolls. The sensual and the spiritual, the carnal and the religious. A ceremony that even has many nooks and crannies that smell of sweaty skin and sex. A dance of bodies that desire each other. Take a look at that slow and erotic scene in the documentary in which we see, as if we were witnessing a seductive dance, how two bearers put on their girdle and sack.

The highly recommended documentary by Jesús Pascual tenderly portrays this complex and exciting universe. It connects different generations and makes us understand much better how in terms of discrimination it is essential to keep memory alive. Oh, the life so hard and so lived of “the dove of San Gil”! And he also does it without the pretense of giving lessons, or setting a chair, much less giving up humor. To the joy that, despite the pain that we guess in many stories, imposes itself as that resurrection that we live in the South in spring. Where there are plenty of labels and stigmas, where however the shadow, a certain shadow, of that cynicism in which Judeo-Christian morality educated us seems to have continuity. The LGTBI identity, although I fear that it is not possible to speak of a unique and closed identity but rather of a plural framework of experiences, is an essential part, regardless of whoever may be, of this revolution – paradoxically, in many aspects, radically conservative – that the full moon makes it explode in the streets of Seville and all of Andalusia. In which, I agree with one of the protagonists of the documentary, I don’t think that the Macarena, or any other Virgin, would care much about replacing her canopy with a Pride float. Those virgins to whom so many fag men today, resignifying the term from his own mouth, pray not, like a child, to stop being gay, but to do well with his boyfriend.

· The documentary Dolores beautiful! After premiering at the last Seville Film Festival, it can now be seen on the FILMIN Platform.

Beautiful Dolores!: The sissy and brother Andalusia