Ferro and Gris repair Nuestra Señora de las Lágrimas

The repair of Nuestra Señora de las Lágrimas is a contest over what the church’s dilapidated appearance means: Gris Marsala and Father Príamo Ferro treat its damage as remediable, while the city, the bank, and the archbishopric invoke its condition to justify demolition. The restoration is constrained by scarce funds and interrupted works, but Gris’s inspection and account of the repairs challenge the claim that the building is beyond saving.

A Restoration Under Pressure

Gris is the architect responsible for the restoration, working in Seville on behalf of the Eurnekian Foundation, which supplied one third of the initial project budget. She has been involved for two years. The restoration began with a team of three, including two Spaniards, but the others left; by the time she speaks with Lorenzo Quart, the work has been nearly halted for a considerable period because approved budgets and promised money have not arrived.

The church’s condition is inseparable from the threat it faces. Gris says the city council, the bank, and the archbishopric describe the building as collapsing to justify its demolition, but she disputes that assessment. The church has been poorly maintained for a century and a half, and its surfaces are damaged, yet neither the walls nor the vault has irreversible cracks. The distinction matters: neglect is evident, but neglect does not itself establish that the structure must be destroyed.

What the Work Repairs

The damage is concentrated largely in the finishes, where moisture has entered through defective roofs. Gris says the roof leaks have been addressed by retiling with lime, cement, and sand. Nearly ten tonnes of material had to be carried up to a height of fifteen metres. She and Father Óscar Lobato did that physical work themselves; Father Príamo Ferro, because of his age, was not able to join them on the rooftops. Gris’s calloused, plaster- and paint-marked hands make the restoration a matter of labor as well as professional judgment.

Further structural work remains. Some wooden beams have rotted after termite attacks encouraged by the damp. Replacing them would be ideal, but the parish lacks the budget. The decorative restoration is also necessarily gradual. Gris has found a glassworker, a friend who works in an artisan glass workshop, willing to make replacement colored pieces for the lost stained glass at no charge. The slow process still requires restoring the leadwork as well as producing the new glass.

The Church’s Age and Continuing Use

Gris emphasizes that the church is three centuries old. She contrasts its treatment in Seville with the reverence an equally old building would receive in her native United States, where such a structure would be regarded as an inviolable historical treasure. In Seville, she sees churches like this one falling into disrepair without anyone intervening. The contrast frames restoration as a question of public and cultural priorities, not merely a construction problem.

The church is also a living parish, though one with very little income. Macarena Bruner tells Quart that the parish is ruined: Father Ferro’s salary is small, and Sunday collections do not cover even the cost of candles. She points to the church’s Thursday gatherings as a recurring spectacle, while Gris’s work gives the threatened building an ongoing practical and communal purpose. Restoring it would preserve more than its fabric; it would keep a place of worship in use.

Repair as Resistance to Demolition

Gris describes the effort as a battle the church must win. Her confidence is conditional: the structure can stand if the essential work is completed, beginning with stopping the leaks and, if funds permit, consolidating or replacing the compromised beams. There is no claim that the church is undamaged or that restoration is effortless. Rather, her account presents a sequence of identifiable problems and feasible repairs, set against a shortage of money and the political pressure to demolish.

That pressure is tied to the value of the site. Pencho Gavira presents the proposed redevelopment as a major urban deal: three thousand square metres in Santa Cruz, linked to the planned sale of Puerto Targa to Saudi investors for between 180 and 200 million dollars. The deal requires the archbishop’s cooperation in secularizing the site, evicting the parish priest, and demolishing the church. Against that commercial timetable, the restoration’s slow work—retiling, stabilizing beams, replacing stained glass—becomes a concrete alternative to treating deterioration as permission to erase the building.

The conflict sharpens when the church becomes associated with successive deaths. The official explanations describe accidents: municipal architect Peñuelas falls from a roof after a scaffold railing gives way, and Father Urbizu is killed when a heavy piece of plaster falls from the cornice after scaffolding shifts. Gris points Quart to the missing section of gilded plaster above the pulpit, but calls the fatal collapse bad luck; elsewhere, she insists the building’s walls and vault remain structurally sound. The apparent tension between localized hazards and the larger claim of repairability is central to the restoration dispute: the church needs careful work, but its need for work is precisely what the demolition advocates use against it.

Later, the restoration’s financial desperation intersects with the mystery surrounding Father Ferro. Police reconstruction suggests that the church’s original pearls were replaced with imitations and that money from their circulation coincided with a resumption of building work, including purchases of masonry materials and equipment beyond what the parish priest’s salary and the collection plate could cover. The evidence does not establish the full circumstances of the pearl transaction, but it connects the church’s material survival to the scandal and violence investigated within its walls.

Significance

The restoration turns on a conflict between condition and value. Gris does not deny the damp, damaged finishes, rotting beams, missing glass, or need for funds; she argues that these problems can be addressed and should not be conflated with irreversible structural ruin. Her hands-on work with Father Óscar, the donated glass, and the nearly ten tonnes of roofing material give that argument physical weight.

The church is at once a historic building, a parish with limited means, and a sought-after development site. Its repairs therefore challenge not only decay but also the priorities that make demolition appear inevitable. The unfinished work leaves the outcome uncertain: the church can endure if the essential repairs are completed, but the money and time needed to complete them are precisely what the redevelopment struggle threatens to deny.