Description
The Granary of the town of Lopera, which is currently called “Casa de la Tercia”, was the testamentary foundation of an individual, Don Gómez Manrique, whose executors were the Commander of Almuradiel and the Commander of Puertollano. D. Gómez Manrique, Commander of Lopera, was a Renaissance knight who did not forget the underprivileged popular classes in his will, donating to the “village and its neighbors two hundred and twelve bushels of wheat for a deposit that would remain there to help poor people.” The building has no decorative elements except for two stone crosses at the top of the roof ridge, one facing the castle and the other at the Plaza del Triunfo. It has been a winery for Lopera wines for decades.The warehouse is a construction of thick brick on its interior and thick rammed earth on its external walls, with cut stones that reinforce the corners or angles of the building. It must have been built in the second half of the 16th century and has private houses of more immediate construction attached to one side of its floor. It communicates underground with the castle through a passage excavated in the 60s by the master builder Antonio Cantero. Rectangular in layout, the warehouse is made up of two floors, the first below the level of Castillo Street, which was accessed from the opposite street. It has three naves covered with barrel vaults and twelve lowered semicircular arches, made of brick on stone pilasters. In its upper part, it has a similar layout, it only varies in the heights and proportions of its arches. It is covered with a flat, gabled vault, which we can see from the outside of the building. On this floor, the radii of the arches are larger and, therefore, their number is smaller, since it has six arch units. The presence of Miguel de Cervantes in Lopera is confirmed in several documents from the time when he was commissioner for the collection of grain for the galleys. Thus it is known that at least between February 22 and 25, 1592, Cervantes was in Lopera, where he collected for the Invincible Armada the amount of 200 bushels of wheat and 60 bushels of barley. He even spent the night at the Posada de la Cruz, located on Real Street. As we have mentioned before, the ground floor of the third floor was used as a wine cellar, here the wine cellars were located, since this place was ideal due to its temperature. At the entrance to the ground floor, just to the right, was the “Sacristía” where the best soleras of the winery were located. Some of the barrels there had inscriptions from its most illustrious visitors. Currently, the upper part is dedicated to various cultural events, being the headquarters of Museo de Pedro Monje, a sculptor and painter from Lopera, born in Lopera in 1945, who emigrated to Barcelona at the age of 19 to take painting and sculpture classes from Luis Muntaner. Moje lived until he died in Valladolid and is the author of the “Los Colosos” fountain, which since 1996 has been located in the Plaza de la Rinconada in the Capital of Valladolid. In Lopera we find the work of “El Cavador” made of painted iron and located in the Parque de la Verja or that of “the emigrants” that we can see on the esplanade of the Ermita del Santo Cristo. Likewise, some of his murals and sculptures can be seen in the Ministry of Education in Madrid, in Mayorga... In addition, different museums and institutions house part of his pictorial, sculptural and ceramic work, such as the Junta de Castilla y León, the Diputación de Valladolid, the Museo Provincial de Jaén or the University of Valladolid among others.
