About a thousand pilgrims accompanied the Virgen de La Salud on Sunday afternoon, from her hermitage in the spa to the parish of San Juan Bautista, where an octave will be celebrated in commemoration of her coronation as Patron of Archena. Upon his arrival in the town he was received to the sound of the national anthem, played by the Santa Cecilia de Archena Musical Group, by a thundering mascletá air-terre.
Next to the church, a mass was celebrated officiated by the new parish priest Pablo Romero accompanied by the other priests of the town and the vicar Alfonso Alburquerque
The Virgin will remain in this parish all this week, during which an octave in her honor will be celebrated. These festive events, began two weeks ago with the proclamation, which was pronounced by the president of the board of directors of the archenero thermal establishment, Amelia Isabel Pérez Mézel. The ceremony was attended by the mayor of Archena, Patricia Fernández López, the lieutenant colonel and director of the Military Residence, Fulgencio Parra, who presided over this celebration, and were accompanied by the Secretary of the Family Secretariat, Manuel-Marcos Sánchez Cervantes, of the Councilors of the City Council of Archena, responsible for the Spa, representatives of the brotherhoods of Archena weeks and other Marian brotherhoods twinned with the Health, such as Cieza, Alcantarilla, Blanca and Murcia. The mass of that day was sung by the cuadrilla del Fig of Pala de Murcia.
A municipal commission is constituted to name the Virgen de la Salud perpetual mayor.
The commission that will initiate the legal and bureaucratic process, will have to conclude with the official and institutional appointment of the Employer of Archena, the Virgin of Health, as ‘Perpetual Mayor’ of the Villa de Archena. The commission is formed, in addition to the first municipal authority, the Councilor for Culture, Mari Carmen Alcolea, the parish priests of Archena, Alfonso Alburquerque and Israel Pérez, the presidents of the 2 Fraternities of the Virgin of Health, a responsible for the Spa, and two municipal technicians
An unprecedented distinction in the five-hundred-year history of the municipality of Archena. «With what with this appointment we want from the local municipal institution to translate, honor and, above all, distinguish, in the most grandiose and transcendent way that the municipal regulations allow us, all the devotion, popular clamor and affection that we have from Many decades ago, the archenera population of our Patron. »
The Mayor of Archena decreed to initiate the process of the file for this official appointment, as contemplated in the Regulation of Honors and Distinctions of the City of Archena, for once controlled and coordinated by a Secretary and Instructor appointed to raise the proposal to the full municipal that with an absolute majority must approve this distinction.
The Virgin of Health, which is venerated during the year in her hermitage of the Balneario de Archena, was popularly acclaimed Patrona de Archena, in a mass that was held in the Plaza del Ayuntamiento on the first Sunday after the definitive end of the Spanish Civil War , in 1939. The Patroness spent the years of the struggle hidden in the lower part of the crypt of her hermitage so as not to be destroyed. Later, on October 11, 1954, the Bishop of the Diocese, at that time, Ramón Sanahuja, crowned her Patron Saint in another popular and campaign mass that was officiated in the Avenue del Carril.
The festivities, which are also celebrated in his honor, take place on the dates of the commemoration of the Corpus and in September, during the Octave, on the occasion of its annual feast.