Quesada
Quesada is located about 100 km from the capital of Jaén, at the southern end of the Sierras de Cazorla, Segura and Las Villas Natural Park, where the Guadalquivir is born, as the municipality’s slogan wields.
An excellent way to get to know one of the most beautiful and historic towns in this Natural Park is to follow in the footsteps of two illustrious poets: Antonio Machado and Miguel Hernández.
Quesada’s connection with Antonio Machado is due to the fact that it is one of the spaces that the poet visited on one of his frequent excursions to the sources of the Guadalquivir. You can follow Machado’s footsteps in a park where there are some ceramics with a fragment of a poem, also found in the Sanctuary of the Virgin of Tíscar,. Once here, take the chance and visit the incomparable Cueva del Agua.
Actually, Quesada’s relationship with Miguel Hernández occurs because his wife was a native of the municipality. You will be able to see how the locals cradle the legacy of the town’s poet through the Miguel Hernández-Josefina Manresa Museum and pay homage to him through different Hernandian corners.
Quesada Town Hall Portal
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…
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. .
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. .
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…
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…
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 VIn 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.”