Description
One of the most emblematic squares of the capital is San Francisco, which owes its name to the old monastery built in the mid-14th century under the dedication of San Francisco de Asís.The Convent was demolished at the end of the 19th century and the San Francisco y el Palacio de la Diputación Provincial square is located on the land it occupied, a project by architect Jorge Porrúa. A sculpture of the Magdalene bordered by cryptic inscriptions currently presides over the patio of the Diputación, in the exact place where the Templar chapel of the old Convento de San Francisco was. But as Juan Eslava Galán indicates in Los Templarios y la Mesa de Salomón, before it was a monastery it was the palace of Fernando III in Jaén. (…) In the following days I gathered information about the palace of Fernando III in Jaén (…) In 1354, King Pedro I the Cruel gave it to the Franciscans. Converted into a monastery, it lasted until 1867, the year in which it was demolished to build the current Provincial Council building on its site (...) The Templars and Solomon's Table. Chapter 17. Eslava Galán also mentions the square and the monastery in her work In Search of the Unicorn: (…) And once the mass was over, which we all heard with great devotion, we retreated outside the walls, leaving through the aforementioned door of Santa María, to the square of the San Francisco monastery, where the race had been prepared, to have a very brilliant tournament (…) In search of the unicorn. Chapter IV. In this environment, there were also the old Butcher Shops, which were demolished in 1930 and their space was also won by the plaza de San Francisco. (…) If a suckling child did not cry here and there one could hear, from behind the walls of the friars' garden, the powerful braying of the donkey's father, one could hear the flight of one of the many flies that were there, hindering the peace and recreation of the people, who came from the nearby butcher shops, where many of them are bred, lush and very biting. (…) In search of the unicorn. Chapter IV.
