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Park on the way to Puerto de Tíscar

In a recently built park on the way to the port of Tíscar, the City Council of Quesada has honored Antonio Machado with some ceramics where fragments of the poem Apuntes para una geografía emotional de España are reproduced.

IN THE MANNER OF JUAN DE MAIRENA

NOTES FOR AN EMOTIVE GEOGRAPHY OF SPAIN

V
In Alicún they sing:

“If the moon is rising,

better under the olive trees

than in the esparto grass.”

VI

And in the Sierra de Quesada:

“I am living in mortal sin:

I ought not to love you;

therefore I love you more.”

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Miguel Hernández-Josefina Manresa museum

The Miguel Hernández-Josefina Manresa Museum is the main element that contextualizes the life and work of the Orihuela writer in the province of Jaén. Located on the ground floor of the building that also houses the Zabaleta Museum, it collects a large part of Miguel Hernández’s legacy.

The musealization responds to a chronological discourse that runs through the work and life of the poet and his wife, trying to convey the poetic sensitivity of Miguel Hernández and the depth of his life messages; the cultural value of his work and its social significance; the didactic dimension of the poet as an icon of the universal values ​​of the human being such as simplicity and constant personal effort, among others; and literature as a positive attitude towards life and as a tool for social and solidarity commitment.

This compendium of values ​​runs through six exhibition halls:

  • The reception area, where his main works are exhibited and a feedback panel synthesizes the life and work of the poet.
  • The “Perito en lunas” room, where aspects of his childhood and youth are exposed, as well as his first trip to Madrid and the influence that this causes in his work.
  • The “El Rayo que no cesa” (The Unending Lightning )room, where the museum discourse is marked by his relationship with Josefina Manresa, as a companion and poetic muse. The relationship with other poets and friends and the impact caused by the death of Ramón Sijé are also present.
  • The “Viento del pueblo”(The Village Wind) room, where the time that Miguel Hernández was in Jaén during the Civil War and the imprint it causes on his work is recreated. At this time he wrote the famous poem “Aceituneros”.(Olive Gatherers)
  • The room “Cancionero y romancero de ausencias”(“Songbook and ballads of absences”), where his dramatic prison via crucis is shown, illustrated with the recreation of a gloomy cell and where some of the beautiful verses he wrote during his captivity are exhibited, such as the famous “Onion Lullaby ”.

The tour ends in the room “The Poet’s Legacy”, a room for reading, workshops and audition, where you can see the impact of his work on a touch screen.

You can also enjoy the poet on the walls of the Museum, since there are different plaques with verses of his works on display that make the walk very enjoyable.

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Hernándian corners

Quesada has a medieval neighborhood with narrow streets embedded in the terrain, snowy facades and huddled with orchards of pots, which make this town one of the most beautiful towns in the province, and there is no better way to get to know it than through Miguel Hernández and Josefina Manresa.

The city council has had the pertinent and timely initiative to further embellish the town through different mosaics in different streets of the Historic Centre, where you can read and contemplate verses and drawings by Miguel Hernández or passages from the memoirs of Josefina Manresa in relation to the town or author. An excellent way to get to know Quesada and enjoy reading the poet’s work, since the setting is unique.

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Panels and mosaics by Miguel Hernández

The Quesada town hall also pays tribute to the poet and Josefina Manresa through panels that inform and invite you to visit the Museum and through large mosaics, where the relationship between both with the town is explained. The mosaics located in the Plaza de la Constitución stand out, where the spaciousness of the space and the presence of a music band invite to recite the poet’s verses.

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Josefina Manresa`s house in Quesada

The house where Josefina Manresa was born is still preserved in Quesada, on January 2, 1916. A building that cannot be visited or has any type of museum, just a ceramic plaque where Quesada proudly shows the birth of his favorite daughter in that house.

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Sanctuary of the Virgin of Tíscar

Antonio Machado visited the Sanctuary of the Virgin of Tíscar, Patron Saint of Quesada, on excursions to the springs of the Guadalquivir.

The Sanctuary is located fourteen kilometers from the town, at the foot of the Peña Negra, with access through a winding mountain road. The Sanctuary has been a pilgrimage site for centuries (the current building that houses the Sanctuary was rebuilt throughout the 20th century on the remains of a primitive medieval hermitage). Inside the temple we will find the image of the Virgin of Tíscar, carved by the sculptor Jacinto Higueras.

In recent years the City Council of Quesada has been holding concerts of different musical genres on the first Saturday in August in the Esplanade of the Sanctuary. In addition, the villages of Tíscar, Belerda and Don Pedro celebrate the Fiesta de los Cargos or Dios Chico during December 26, 27 and 28.

Inside the Sanctuary, on the entrance esplanade to the temple, in homage to Antonio Machado, there is a stone poem dating from 1959 that refers to the Cordillera or Cuerda de los Agrios, a mountain thorn that collapses over the port from Tíscar and which runs parallel to the Cabañas hill, one of the main heights of the Sierras de Cazorla, Segura y las Villas Natural Park:

CLXVI
Old Songs
IV
In the mountains of Quesada

there is a giant eagle that is

greenish, black and gold,

with its wings always open.

It’s of stone and never tires.

(…)

The remains of the rock castle, built in the fourteenth century under Christian rule stand above the Sanctuary, in the Peña Negra, of which only the donjon is preserved. Cueva del Agua -declared Natural Monument of Andalusia by the Junta in April 2019-, is few meters down the road, with waterfalls and spectacular cascades, considered one of the most dazzling geological wonders of the province of Jaén, and which, without a doubt, Machado visited in his search for the sources of the Guadalquivir.