Portal de Las Torres de Cotillas

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The Cabildo Superior de Cofradías of Las Torres de Cotillas is half a century old (27/01/2019)

The trajectory of the Cabildo Superior de Cofradías of Las Torres de Cotillas (Murcia) starts in the pre-consememenos of the Holy Week of 1969, year in which the processions of the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Christ ran through the streets Mayor, Reyes Católicos, Field and Mule.

Exactly half a century ago this guiding institution of the Passionist brotherhoods of the town was constituted -in those origins five were the integrating Fraternities (Our Father Jesus Nazareno and Santo Entierro de Cristo, San Juan Evangelista, Virgen de los Dolores, Santa Mujer Verónica and Santísimo Christ of the Fall and Holy Christ Crucified) -.

In front of what at that time -and until the 80s- it would be called Superior Union of Brotherhoods would be chosen unanimously Manuel Fernández Vicente presiding over a team that would count as Treasurer with Pedro Verdú Fernández and as Mayordomos to Antonio Contreras Balsalobre (on behalf of the Brotherhood of St. John the Evangelist), Juan Antonio Fernández Balanza (Santísimo Cristo Crucificado), Catalina Férez Rosauro (Virgin of Sorrows), Antonio Contreras Jiménez (Our Father Jesus Nazareno and Santo Entierro de Cristo) and Joaquín Ruiz García (Holy Woman Veronica and Holy Christ of the Fall).

In subsequent dates the Cabildo would incorporate three new confraternities to its Board of Directors, those of the Risen Christ and Saint Peter and Our Lady of Mercy - both founded in 1980 - and that of the Holy Christ of Flagellation, created ten years later.

Achievements of fifty years of harmony in popular devotion.

The balance that the Cabildo Superior de Cofradías of Las Torres de Cotillas (Murcia) has offered since its foundation is immense and worthy of review, undertaking in this fifty-year execution several plans of action.

From the preservation, promotion and enlargement of Holy Week to the planning / organization of the work of the different brotherhoods for the maintenance and growth of their artistic and human heritage (as show buttons, the restoration and incorporation of new sizes and thrones and the growing participation of young people in the proper development and presence in processional parades) through the regulation of their internal functioning thanks to statutes agreed to that effect.

The efforts of this Cabildo to project the local Holy Week at the highest level do not remain here.

The mission of the highest Passionist institution, Torrena, has also achieved the objective of realizing initiatives of great significance and reference even in the context of our Region.

With constructive spirit, the Cabildo Superior de Cofradías of Las Torres de Cotillas (Murcia) has spurred consciences, encouragement and purpose in favor of our religious parades uniting a people.

With this philosophy, the children's procession of Holy Week was launched in 2017, which will entail this commitment to involve young generations from the grassroots in what is a relay, a new sap as a key to continuity, the survival of the great event of the Passion, Death and Resurrection of the Lord shown as visual catechism in the streets of our municipality.

No less vigilance would the Cabildo create something exceptional, pioneering, unique in our land in Murcia such as the Sample of Dioramas (Models) of the Passion of Christ, located on the ground floor of what used to be the Consistorial House until 2011and being a savior of virtuosity in detail in terms of passages, volumes and figures of the New Testament, work of our countryman and brother since his childhood José Antonio Egea Sandoval, is today a candidate for the declaration of Cultural Interest granted by the regional government.

Another of the dreams achieved by the Cabildo is its Permanent Exposition of Holy Week Torrena located also in the ground floor of its headquarters, the aforementioned building of the old Town Hall, itself a Museum that collects the trace, the memories and the artistic elements , ornamental and of great ethnographic and, of course, sentimental charge of everything that represents a symbol of the eight local passionary brotherhoods.

The institutionalization of the figures of the Crier of the Holy Week and the Nazarene of the Year -from 1983 the first distinction, and from a year after the second-, the creation in 2017 of the title of Cofrade de Honor, the annual offering to the Monument to the Nazareno - sculpted in 2015 by the Murcian image maker Jesús Calero - in homage to the absent brothers, the boost to the Tamborada, the edition and distribution of the poster announcing Holy Week by homes, commercial establishments, companies and entities of the municipality, the call also all the years of the drawing competition to design the poster that advertises the children's procession and in which a large number of students up to 16 years of age compete, as well as in painting and handicraft contests, the cohabitation days, programming of the Meetings-Festivals of Passionate Bands from all over the Region, participation in the Cavalcade of the Magi with the fi

of the Angel of the Annunciation, the transfer of the Patron Saint of La Salceda from her Hermitage of the Coto to the urban area within the framework of the Major Festivals in her honor and the dissemination of the parades in the regional media and even national are other milestones that count as lasting achievements of half a century of walking of a Cabildo that, prepared to face the challenges of the immediate future with sufficient doses of realism and vitality, make it up to date in its Board of Directors:

-Consiliary Parish Priest: Ismael Sánchez Gómez.

-President: Juan José Ruiz Moñino.

-Vice President: Ángeles Sola Sánchez.

-Secretary: Francisco José Torres Ruiz.

-Deputy secretary: Francisco José González Verdú.

- Treasurer: José Ángel Sánchez Sola.

-Vocales born, the presidents of the eight member fraternities:

Alfonso Sandoval Carrillo (Our Father Jesus Nazareno and Santo Entierro de Cristo),

Consuelo Sandoval Contreras (San Juan Evangelista),

Domingo Cava Martínez (Our Lady of Sorrows),

Joaquín Ruiz García (Santa Verónica Woman and Santísimo Cristo de la Caída),

José Vicente Bellver Sánchez (Holy Christ Crucified),