José Ruiz Núñez receives 'Escudo de Oro' for lifetime devotion to Vélez-Málaga Holy Week

José Ruiz Núñez ordered a beer at the Plaza de las Carmelitas without ceremony, seemingly unbothered that the Cofradía Assembly of Vélez-Málaga had just awarded him the Golden Shield for 2026. He is a man of measured temperament, the kind who can quiet a room with his voice. Twelve years ago, he stepped down as Hermano Mayor—the elected leader—of the Real Cofradía of Our Father Jesus of the Great Power in His Third Fall and Most Holy Mary of Sorrows, the brotherhood that processes through town on Holy Thursday. The honor meant something to him, he acknowledged, but what truly mattered was the unity within the brotherhood itself, the one he calls his "brotherhood of loves." When you do work that genuinely moves you, he said, you are already paid.

Ruiz Núñez did not arrive at Vélez-Málaga's Holy Week tradition by accident or sudden conversion. His family belonged to the Cofradía of Our Father Jesus the Garden and Most Holy Mary of the Forsaken, the oldest image in the town. He walked as a penitent in that procession as a child, part of the maternal inheritance. But then came a period, he admits, when he disconnected entirely from Holy Week. Something shifted. He fell in love with the form of the Virgin of Sorrows, and the Great Power seized him—the unique posture of that Christ figure, the way it lay stretched across the pavement in a position unlike any other in the province of Málaga. The sculptor Domingo Sánchez Mesa of Granada created it, drawing inspiration from a Third Fall in Santander carved by Manuel Cacicedo Canales. That horizontal sprawl, Ruiz Núñez insists, is singular. No other brotherhood in the region has a titular image positioned so completely prone.

His other life began in the early 1980s, almost by necessity. The Virgin's canopy was deteriorating, old and poorly made, and it needed new embroidery. He taught himself. His sister-in-law guided his hand, as did Antonio Luis Carmona, one of the embroidery pioneers in Vélez-Málaga, and the women of the brotherhood. For a time—he cannot recall exactly how long—he and a group from the cofradía trained at the San Carlos convent, learning foundational techniques. But Ruiz Núñez understood that embroidery begins on paper. A solid design must exist before the first stitch, before the slow, meticulous, laborious process of building piece by piece, stitch by stitch. The work deepens when done in community, surrounded by conversation and different eyes on the same canvas.

His fingerprints are now woven into the religious heritage of Vélez-Málaga and beyond. The canopy unveiled in 2000 bears his work. So do the banners, standards, and ornaments of nearly every brotherhood in town. He has created embroidered pieces that traveled as far as Madrid. The rivalry that once existed between his brotherhood and the Ancient Archconfraternity of the Holy True Cross—the one devoted to the Poor Jesus of Nazareth and the Virgin of Hope—has softened. There is no more competitive edge. His work and that of his collaborators saturate the visual language of the town's most sacred week.

Leadership, he learned, is a heavy responsibility. Twelve years as Hermano Mayor meant navigating moments beautiful and difficult. He remembers one from the mid-1970s, before his time in office, when the processional throne failed mid-route. The wooden support beams, joined with mortise and tenon, began to give way near Alcalde José Herrera street. Rain came hard. The procession could not continue. But Ruiz Núñez has carried forward despite such setbacks, sustained by what he said in the 2007 Holy Week sermon—words that still move him when he recalls them. He believes in the shoulder of his wife, the one he leans on still, as he did on the first day. He believes in his daughter's shoulder, watching her grow into womanhood with the same tenderness. And he believes in his mother's shoulder, imagining her laughing from heaven each time he processes. Holy Week, he says, is his life. That conviction, lived for decades through needle and thread and service, is what the Golden Shield recognizes.