Village
Municipality of the comarca of Mesa de Ocaña, in the province of Toledo, where the Cortes met in 1422 and between 1468 and 1469 and where in November 1809 the Spanish army suffered one of its worst defeats of the Peninsular War; its Neoclassical Plaza Mayor, raised in the eighteenth century by order of Charles III, is declared a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection), it preserves the Fuente Grande built between 1573 and 1578 and its Holy Week is declared a Festival of National Tourist Interest.
Monument
A baroque-style square in Ocaña, in the province of Toledo, begun in 1777, already in the 18th century, by order of Charles III, although the design to replace the original, by then deteriorated, square was by Francisco Sánchez de Madrid; work began in 1782 and the west, north and south façades were finished in 1791. It has an almost square plan, 55 by 52.5 metres, with arcades running all round its perimeter formed by 70 pillars of rusticated ashlar, on which rest two storeys with balconies and attic windows; the paving is of cobblestones laid in large panels. It is declared a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) and is counted among the largest main squares in Spain, surpassed only by those of Madrid and Salamanca.
Monument
A monument in Herreran Renaissance style located in Ocaña (Toledo), known in its day as the New Fountain; its design is attributed to Juan de Herrera, although there is no document to prove it. The work, of public benefit, was built between 1573 and 1578, with local Ocaña craftsmen such as Blas Hernández and Francisco Sánchez, and noble coats of arms carved by Alonso de la Carrera. Rectangular in plan, its main front, 62 by 55 metres, is a stone gallery with twenty Tuscan pilasters forming as many arches, beneath which water flowed from ten spouts into a trough used as a watering place for livestock. It suffered floods in 1784 and 1829, and in 1870 ten new spouts were added to it. It was declared a Monumento Histórico-Artístico (a former Spanish heritage designation, predecessor of the BIC) on 24 August 1976.
Monument
The Old Fountain of Ocaña stands on the outskirts of the town, near the chapel of Jesús de las Cuevas, in the valley of los Huertos; it is called old because it already existed when the Great Fountain, also known as the Little Fountain for being smaller, was built. Its origin is thought to go back to the earliest Roman settlements in the area, although the first documentary reference dates from 1501. It has been rebuilt several times, notably in 1574, 1722 and 1911, and was last restored in 2011. It has a rectangular plan, 25 by 18 metres, dug below ground level with a cobbled floor, reached by a downward slope; its trough, 18 metres long, is divided into three sections and receives water from two springs through an ashlar gallery where stalactites form.
Monument
The town's chief civil monument and a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection), a palace built in the late 15th century in the transition from Gothic to Mudéjar style by Gutierre de Cárdenas, a native of Ocaña, grand commander of León in the Order of Santiago and adviser to the Catholic Monarchs. Its Gothic façade bears a large 'S' from the Cárdenas coat of arms; the rectangular inner courtyard has eighteen octagonal stone pillars whose capitals display the arms of the Cárdenas and Enríquez families alongside the scallop shells of the Order of Santiago. In one of its Mudéjar chambers, a wooden skirting bears an Arabic Kufic inscription translated as 'there is no god but Allah, Muhammad is his messenger'. It passed to the dukes of Frías and, after several transfers, to the Ministry of Justice; today it houses Ocaña's town hall.
Monument
A Dominican convent of Renaissance design built in the mid-16th century in Ocaña, whose choir stalls have been attributed to the circle of Alonso de Covarrubias, who was also the architect of the cloister. It was built, initially called the convent of the Rosario, on land granted in part by Queen Joanna I of Castile, adjoining the old town wall; Prince Philip himself, the future Philip II, who spent much of his childhood in Ocaña, laid the first stone. It has been a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) since 2000. Its church, with three naves, a polygonal apse and six chapels with iron screens, was painted between 1888 and 1891 by friar Luis Santiago. The cloister, on two storeys, combines Doric and Ionic columns, and today houses the convent's museums.
Monument
The convent of Santa Catalina de Sena, in Ocaña (Mesa de Ocaña, Toledo), is a 17th-century building in Renaissance style, formerly known as the convent of San Buenaventura. It is one of the many religious houses dotted across Ocaña's historic centre.
Monument
A parish church of 14th-century origin that is one of the finest examples of Mudéjar architecture in the district. It houses processional images of great artistic value. Its origins go back to a Jewish synagogue, on whose site the church was built; from the original mid-13th-century Mudéjar structure survive the horseshoe arches that divide its three naves, covered by five pointed vaults. The limestone columns that now support the arches replaced the original brick pillars in the 15th century, and above the vaults, now bricked up, windows and corbels painted with Kufic characters typical of Mudéjar art can still be made out. The archaeologist Basilio Pavón Maldonado counts it among the oldest Mudéjar churches in Toledo.
Monument
16th-century Plateresque remains of an earlier, now vanished, church in Ocaña, preserved as a testimony to the town's rich religious heritage. The tower of the old church of San Martín was declared a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) in 1993, a recognition that protects this vestige as one of the municipality's protected heritage elements.
Monument
The convent of Santa Clara, under the patronage of the Franciscan Order, is the oldest of those established in Ocaña. It was founded in 1515 by Catalina Román, widow of Francisco Muñoz, who devoted part of her estate and her own residences to the foundation, reserving the patronage for her son Alonso. It was first located near Mayor street, in the old Pelota street, and in 1626 it moved to its present site, on Alonso de Ercilla square. Its church is a single-bay rectangular nave, with a high hemispherical dome and a choir at the foot. Among its chapels, the chapel of Nuestro Padre Jesús de Medinaceli stands out, protected by an iron screen, which venerates the titular image of one of the most important brotherhoods of Ocaña's Holy Week.
Monument
The convent of San José, in Ocaña (Toledo), is a foundation of Discalced Carmelites in 16th-century Renaissance style, established in 1595 by María de Bazán, wife of Alonso de Ercilla, with the authorisation of Cardinal Albert of Austria. The church was consecrated in 1626, its first prioress being sister Beatriz de Jesús, niece of Saint Teresa of Ávila, which links the town to the reform of the Carmelite order. In its crypt lay, for centuries, the remains of Alonso de Ercilla, author of La Araucana, moved to Madrid in 1869 and partly returned in 1877. The convent was declared a Monumento Histórico-Artístico de carácter nacional (a former Spanish heritage designation, predecessor of the BIC) in 1976 and today holds the status of a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection).
Monument
A parish church in Ocaña traditionally known as El Carmen, after its former ties to the Carmelite order.
Monument
A chapel rebuilt after the damage suffered during the French occupation of the Peninsular War, closely tied to popular devotion in Ocaña. Every third Sunday of September a pilgrimage is held in its honour.
Monument
The Lope de Vega Theatre occupies the building of the former College of the Society of Jesus of Ocaña, founded in 1558 thanks to a donation from Luis de Calatayud y Borjas, which served in turn as a school, a cavalry barracks and, after the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767, a public school. In 1832 the Sociedad Benéfico Dramática de Ocaña converted the college's old church into a theatre, then called the Teatro Principal; the present building, already bearing the name Lope de Vega, opened in 1986 after a long reconstruction, with a capacity of 604 seats. The façade retains remains of the original foundation, with a stone doorway of the Doric order topped by a heraldic coat of arms, and a three-storey tower in Mudéjar-Classical style. It is today the centre of the town's cultural life.
Monument
The justice column of Ocaña is a limestone column formed by a cluster of eight pillars, topped by a wrought-iron cross, standing in José María Prada square, opposite the Lope de Vega Theatre. It is a 15th-century work in Gothic style, a copy of the original column, erected when the town, on joining the Order of Santiago, confirmed its own jurisdiction. It has occupied various sites throughout its history, among them the main square until 1565, and since 1986 it has stood on a stepped pedestal at its present location. Above the cluster of pillars rises a small hollow tempietto, with remains of careful ornamentation; the monument's original crowning piece has disappeared and was replaced by the present iron cross.
Curiosity
Because of its size, the Plaza Mayor of Ocaña is commonly cited as the third largest main square in Spain, behind only those of Madrid and Salamanca, a surprising scale for a town of its population.
Curiosity
The Fuente Grande system conceals more than half a kilometre of underground galleries for collecting and channelling water, a 16th-century feat of engineering that still astonishes visitors.
Historical milestone
The Battle of Ocaña was fought on 19 November 1809 next to the municipality of Ocaña, in the province of Toledo, as part of the Spanish War of Independence. A French army of about 40,000 infantry, 6,000 cavalry and substantial artillery, under the command of King Joseph Bonaparte with Marshal Soult as chief of staff, faced a Spanish army of about 51,869 men, led by General Juan Carlos de Aréizaga, appointed head of the Army of the Centre a few weeks earlier. It was the best and strongest army that the Junta Central had managed to gather after the disaster of Tudela, thanks to the weaponry sent by the British allies. Its defeat was one of the worst of the war for Spain and opened the road to Andalucía for the French.
Curiosity
In 1313, when the town was at the height of its splendour, Alfonso XI granted the tributes of Ocaña to the Order of Santiago, which established an important commandery here.
Curiosity
Master Rodrigo Manrique, whose death inspired the famous Coplas written by his son Jorge Manrique, died in Ocaña, linking the town to one of the great works of Castilian literature.
Curiosity
The town of Ocaña inspired two great playwrights of the Spanish Golden Age. Lope de Vega chose it as the setting for Peribáñez y el comendador de Ocaña, one of his best-known dramas of honour, while Pedro Calderón de la Barca set his comedy Casa con dos puertas mala es de guardar there. Both works confirm Ocaña's symbolic weight in classical Spanish theatre, which made it a recurring dramatic setting during the Golden Age.
Activity
With more than four hundred years of tradition, it is declared a Festival of National Tourist Interest. Ten brotherhoods and confraternities, some dating from the 16th to the 18th century, bring together some two thousand members in processions marked by order and silence.
Activity
In the Good Friday procession the armaos parade, confraternity members who wear half-suits of armour from the 16th and 17th centuries belonging to the Archconfraternity. They represent the centurions who escorted Jesus on the way to Calvary, though in clothing of another era: hardened steel armour worked on breastplate and back, a helmet with a cockade and coloured plume, a yellow skirt, trousers, black stockings and shoes, white gloves, and a sword and partisan in hand. They parade in the procession of the Caídas, which sets out at a quarter past nine in the morning.
Historical milestone
Juan II convened the Cortes at Ocaña in 1422 and his son Enrique IV summoned them here again between 1468 and 1469. The town met the conditions for hosting the court: a good position on the road from Toledo to the Levante and space enough to lodge the procurators.
Food and drink
Sponge cakes soaked in syrup with wine or liqueur and dusted with cinnamon, which the town's confectioners sell all year round and which are handed out at the fairs. Alongside them are made the turcos, mantecados and puff pastries of the local baking.