Úbeda pays homage to the Saint with a street named after him. This street, which was previously called Calle del Toril, is located at the confluence of Calle Carmen and right next to the Museo Oratorio de Saint John of the Cross, precisely where the mystical poet died, so the choice of the name of the street could not be more accurate.
You can find it in the historic center of the city, in the Plaza de López Almagro. Casa de los Méndez takes on special importance for the literary route of Saint John of the Cross in Úbeda because this is where his relics were venerated before being taken to the Collegiate Church of Santa María de los Reales Alcázares.
Former seat of the Town Hall, it is a magnificent example of Renaissance civil architecture. In the gallery on the upper floor there are two niches, one with the image of San Miguel Arcángel, patron of the city, and the other with Saint John of the Cross. Today it houses the “María de Molina” Conservatory of Music.
In this place the restitution of the body of Saint John of the Cross to Úbeda was unsuccessfully managed. His mortal remains were secretly stolen two years after his death, at midnight, before the city noticed the theft and he was taken to Segovia.
Although the stealth operation was observed by a neighbor on the street, the bricklayer Salvador Quesada, fearing the consequences, he did not give notice until the following day.
It is also interesting to know that Cervantes lived for a time in Úbeda, so he must have been aware of the facts, since he immortalized it in chapter XIX of the first part of Don Quixote, where the famous nobleman begins one of his adventures against “a camisade of twenty ”, who carry a coffin to Segovia, and they indicate that they are coming from Úbeda.
In any case, the city of Úbeda did not resign to the looting and filed a lawsuit with Segovia. The petition for the return of the venerated body of the Saint to Pope Clement VIII was approved in February 1596, in the old town council houses, issuing his Brief Apostolic “Expositum nobis fuit” in which the rights of Úbeda and orders the restitution of the corpse to where he was first buried are recognized.
As is known, Segovia did not return the body and Úbeda, after the long and controversial lawsuit, in 1607 managed to recover part of the relics of the Carmelite reformer, a finger and a tibia, which are in the Museum of Saint John of the Cross.
The Church of San Isidoro is a place that Muñoz Molina sometimes recreates in his novels, as he does in The Polish Horseman, where, in addition to capturing the “atmosphere” of Magina, he uses it to locate some of his peculiar characters, such as its bullfighting parish priest.
(…) He recalled that there was no light in that narrow street, which lead to the San Isidoro clearing, with its fountain whose flow he heard at the same time as the splash in the mud of a horse’s hooves, which shaking his head, made the harness of a car rattle] ”(…)
The Church of San Isidoro, dating from the 16th and 17th centuries and built on ancient remains of a mosque, is of extraordinary interest as it is one of the few Gothic constructions in a city famous for its Renaissance art. In fact, although the exterior has two Gothic façades in the Flamboyant Gothic style -represented mainly in the pinnacles-, the interior is in the style of Renaissance.
We will continue on the itinerary with a space constantly mentioned by Muñoz Molina in his novel The Polish Horseman, Mercado de Abastos( Food Market). Here his father used to come every morning to sell the products hard-harvested in the family garden.
(…) “It should have dawned by now, his father would be in the market ordering the damp and shiny vegetables on the marble counter, maybe wondering from time to time where he was, where to of those cities he dreamt as a teenager would his stray profession of interpreter might have taken him. ” (…)
Antonio Muñoz Molina. The Polish Horseman.
Although since 1878 there was great concern to provide the city with a food market to avoid street sales, it was not until 1933 that the building was commissioned to the architect from Linares, Mr. Luis Casanova Vila, and the construction concluded in 1935.
The Mercado de Abastos, in a rationalist style, was erected in the place where the Convent of Nuestra Señora de la Coronada had previously stood, from the 16th century.
The scenes of his childhood, the landscape of his native Úbeda and the remoteness of the Guadalquivir valley, are continuously present in Muñoz Molina’s work, as the author himself reveals:
“(…) I like many places, but I look at the landscape of the Guadalquivir valley from the walls of my city and that landscape moves me in a way that no other moves me. (…) “
Interview with Antonio Muñoz Molina. Librújula Magazine. February 25, 2016.
An intimacy revealed in many of his novels and where the viewpoints of Úbeda serve as a watchtower to reveal the aesthetic qualities and feelings that they provoke.
(…) “I recall the vertigo of looking down the viewpoints of the wall and seeing in front of my eyes the entire depth of the precipices and the unlimited extension of the world, the terraces of the orchards, the hills of the olive groves, the broken and distant brilliance of the river, the dark blue of the foothills of the Sierra, the demolished statue -like profile of Mount Aznaitín […] “
Antonio Muñoz Molina. The Polish Horseman.
“(…) Solana too had looked at that space of unlimited light as a child and returned to it to die, those open streets of Magina that seemed to end before the sea and embankments like balconies, cliffs or high maritime viewpoints from where he looked out into all the clarity of the world not violated but by the greed of his pupils and the fables of his imagination (…) ”.
Antonio Muñoz Molina. Beatus Ille.
The Sanctuary of Virgen de la Cabeza is located about 32 kilometers from the urban center of Andújar. It stands on the Cerro del Cabezo, in the foothills of the Sierra de Andújar Natural Park, reaching panoramic views of great interest. The primitive Sanctuary dates from the end of the 13th century, and a remodeling was made in the 16th century by the famous Renaissance architect Andrés de Vandelvira.
During the siege of the Sanctuary of the Virgen de la Cabeza, the temple was almost totally destroyed and rebuilt years later by the General Directorate of Devastated Regions and Reparations.
In the midst of the Civil War, when the military rebellion in the province of Jaén failed, a group of civil guards along with their families settled in the Sanctuary of the Virgen de la Cabeza, this being the scene of a bloody siege by the republican troops . A monument remembers this episode at the entrance of the Sanctuary and if you look closely, you can still see remains of shrapnel on the side walls of the Basilica.
Miguel Hernández would journalistically describe the assault of this siege, depicting in detail its development, which would last from September 14, 1936 to May 1, 1937, when the besieged surrendered.
South Front. Number 15, May 13, 1937
(…) “The building of Cabeza stands before the bloody and dark dawn. In it I saw the representation of a tricorn monster … (…)
The Sanctuary also has the Mariano Museum, located in the premises of the Basilica and which contains an important artistic, documentary and anthropological sample of the historical legacy that the devotion to the Virgen de la Cabeza has been bearing through the centuries.
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There are some images that attest the presence of the poet in the siege of the Sanctuary, some exhorting the troops and others at the command post of the republican troops.
This helps the poet to convey in detail the development of the siege, as he explains in On the taking of Cabeza. Letter and clarification.
“(…) I attended the combat from the first moments, although without pencil or paper, I do not like nor can I exploit the moment I live, and I prefer to relive it remembering it. (…)
South Front. Number 15, May 13, 1937
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Casa de la Tercia was the Granary of the town of Lopera, destined to store cereals for loaning to neighbors in times of scarcity. This is of historical interest because Cervantes was in Lopera, between February 22 and 25, 1592, collecting cereal for the Invincible Armada. The building was also used as a cellar for the excellent wines of the area. The town is known as “little Jerez”.
Today Casa de la Tercia literary has been given a cultural use. On the ground floor of the Casa de la Tercia there is an exhibition of 54 photographs of the Spanish Civil War in color in the town of Lopera (1936-1940). The visit can be completed by accessing the Museum of Pedro Monje, a sculptor, ceramicist and painter from Lopera, which is located on the top floor of the Casa de la Tercia.
Architecturally speaking, the building, which dates from the second half of the 16th century, is a thick-walled brick construction, with few decorative elements and with quarry stones that reinforce the corners of the building.
Lopera pays tribute to Miguel Hernández through a monument in the form of a large mosaic with the poem “Aceituneros de Jaén”(Olive Gatherers of Jaen), which today has become the official anthem of the province of Jaén.
In the same square there is a plaque in homage to the XIV International Brigade, in memory and recognition of the people of Lopera for their sacrifice.
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