The proclaimed city. The Representation of Seville in the Discourse of the Official Holy Week Pregón in the Twenty-First Century

Abstract

The Official Holy Week pregón of Seville constitutes a key event in the city’s cultural and religious projection. This oral discourse not only announces the celebration but also constructs and reconstructs an image of Seville that encompasses urban, historical, social, and devotional dimensions. This article examines how Seville is represented in the pregones of the twenty-first century. To this end, it employs a semi-automated discourse analysis combining quantitative and qualitative techniques in order to identify the principal rhetorical and narrative strategies used by the speakers. The findings show that Seville is not merely presented as the setting for the processions, but rather emerges as the protagonist of the cofrade narrative, personified, endowed with human emotions, and evoked as a mystical and sacred city. The study concludes that the pregón constitutes a space of collective narration in which discourse, tradition, and popular religiosity shape Seville’s urban imaginary.