Jorge Manrique
The place and date of Jorge Manrique’s birth is highly controversial, since there is no specific document that certifies it and, although it has been maintained that he was born in Paredes de Navas (Palencia) in 1440, where his father, Mr. Rodrigo Manrique de Lara was a count; there are reputed historians of the Middle Ages, such as Domingo Henares, a professor at the UNED in Albacete, in his work Letters from Don Rodrigo Manrique to his son Don Jorge (Diputación Provincial de Albacete, 2001), where he argues that the poet could have been born in Jaén, specifically in Segura de la Sierra in the year 1434
Saint Teresa of Jesús
Teresa de Cepeda y Ahumada, known as Saint Teresa de Ávila or Saint Teresa of Jesus, was born in Ávila on March 28, 1515 and was the first woman “Doctor of the Church”.
The connection of Saint Teresa of Jesus with the province of Jaén comes precisely because of her work to reform the Order of Carmel, where the Convent of the Discalced Carmelites of San José del Salvador in Beas de Segura was her tenth foundation and first in Andalusia .
Saint John of the Cross
Juan de Yepes Álvarez, later beatified, canonized and proclaimed Saint John of the Cross and Doctor of the Universal Church, was born in the town of Fontiveros in Avila in 1542.
He studied Humanities at the Jesuits of Medina del Campo and at twenty-one years of age, his religious vocation led him to join the Carmelitas Calzados of the town, with the name of Juan de Santo Matía. As a professed friar he settled in Salamanca, where he studied Philosophy at the University and in 1567 he was ordained a priest.
Antonio Machado
Antonio Cipriano José María Machado Ruiz, full name of one of the most emblematic poets of the Generation of 98, better known as Antonio Machado, was born in Seville on July 26, 1875.
Antonio Machado’s stay in Baeza ensued the deep regret caused by the death of his wife, Leonor Izquierdo Cuevas, on August 1, 1912
Miguel Hernández
Born in Orihuela in 1910, Miguel Hernández arrived in Jaén on March 2, 1937.
In Jaén he would reside in the Commissariat building, located at number 9 Llana Street – today Francisco Coello, 9 -, palace of the Marquis of Blanco Hermoso, and where the Speaker of the South Front is also located. The fruitful and significant work of Miguel Hernández in Jaén began the same day of his arrival, since on March 2 he dated “Aceituneros”, which became the provincial anthem in Jaén and on March 4, his prose “The Struggle and the life of the Spanish Peasant ”.
Federico García Lorca
Federico García Lorca, poet and playwright assigned to the Generation of 27, was born in the Granada town of Fuentevaqueros on June 5, 1898 and died dramatically at dawn on August 18, 1936, when he was supposedly shot somewhere on the road between Víznar and Alfacar (Granada). The mortal remains of one of the most universal Spanish poets of the 20th century have not yet been found.
The study trip to Baeza, where he met Antonio Machado – already a French language professor at the General and Technical Institute – was crucial to awakening his vocation as a writer, since in his adolescence the young Lorca felt more affinity for music than for writing.
Juan Eslava Galán
Juan Eslava Galán was born in Arjona (Jaén) in 1948. He graduated from the University of Granada with a degree in English Philology and received his PhD in Letters with his thesis on Polyorcetics and late medieval fortification in the kingdom of Jaén, where he analyzes the history of the kingdom of Jaén – especially from the Castilian conquest- and studies the various justifications and typologies of the fortresses, towers, castles and walls of the province.
Antonio Muñoz Molina
Antonio Muñoz Molina was born in Úbeda on January 10, 1956, in the attic that his parents rented when they got married, “the room of the beam”, as he himself recalls. His mother was a housewife and his father worked in the garden and sold vegetables in the food market, perhaps from there, the references to the vegetable gardens of Magina.
He went to elementary high school at the Salesian school “Santo Domingo Sabio” and high school at the Institute of High School “San Juan de la Cruz”, both in Úbeda.
