The East Wall  

Úbeda's defensive the walls and the entrance gates still stand along the old town's eastern edge.

St. Lucy Gate

Puerta de Santa Lucia or the St. Lucy Gate is well preserved (below left). Originally it led into the pottery district (and out to the Arab residential area.) Now it leads to a plaza where the Castilian lions below guard the parking lot.


The view to the west shows modern Úbeda (below) grown up over the former Moorish quarter. The old town walls are in the foreground.

Losal Gate

At the other end of the east wall from St. Lucy Gate is the Losal Gate. Towers were built high over the gates so the town's defenders would have gravity on their side when attacked. Entrances were to the side and often went through angular passageways so battering rams were less effective.


The Losal Gate leads up a steep incline through a horse-shoe shaped Mudejar double arch. The wooden screen shown to the left of the arch protects the Lady of Solitude Chapel (shown below) which greets arrivals. While such religious shrines are quite common in Andalusia, we didn't see much of these “chapel in the wall” niches in Úbeda. This shrine, however, prepared us for one of the most significant religious stops in a town renowned for its secular Renaissance architecture just a few cobblestones away.
 

St. John of the Cross

The east end was the last neighborhood of Úbeda’s biggest saint: St. John of the Cross whose remains were first interred here in this 1627 chapel (below) built on the spot where he died in 1591. (His remains were stealthily removed in the middle of the night 2 years later.) Here his small Oratorio flanks one of the first Carmelite convents built after John and Theresa of Avila reformed that order. Two crests of the new and improved religious order flank John's statue above the Corinthian columned doorway.


 A poet-mystic and doctor of the church, John of the Cross was considered a co-founder of the reformed (Discalced) Carmelites. He who wrote "La noche oscura del alma" or "The Dark Night of the Soul" was born near Avila of a family that had converted from Judaism. He was one of the first to be schooled by a brand new order still known as the Society of Jesus. His fellow Carmelites imprisoned and whipped him as they thought he was moving the order toward too strict of an observance. While imprisoned, he wrote some of the greatest Spanish mystic poetry ever. Centuries later, the seminarian who was to become John Paul II wrote his dissertation on this saint's work. Fray Juan's Úbeda nights may have been dark for his soul as dissent again attacked the Discalced Carmelites and he withdrew into absolute solitude during the last years of his life. The adjoining convent is now a museum to his life.

Agriculture

Through the east wall, we see this view (below) of the agricultural countryside of the Guadalquivir Valley that long fueled Úbeda’s growth. Olive orchards such as these are still the area's most important crop, but today about a third of Úbedeños work in service industries. The town is at the geographic center of the Jaen province and was on the border between Christian Castile and Moorish Granada after Fernando the Saint captured it in 1233. Subsequent kings would relocate subjects here in an attempt to keep the town from backsliding into the Moorish side.




Now let's take a walk west through the heart of Úbeda. Join us by clicking here.

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Please join us in the following slide show to give Úbeda the viewing it deserves by clicking here.

Úbeda, Spain

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