Description
In 1539 the Secretary of Charles V, the ubetense Don Francisco de los Cobos, acquired the villas of Canena and Torres, which were alienated by the Crown to the Military Orders of Santiago and Calatrava. With this double purchase he rounded Cobos his heritage; years earlier, in 1537 he also made it with the villa of Sabiote, head of his large lordship, completed with the acquisition of Jimena and Recena by his wife Maria de Mendoza.
Cobos not only had territorial jurisdiction over these populations, but also exercised strong control over all of them of their Councils and their inhabitants.
In Torres, apart from certain actions to preserve the medieval castle, the Council planned various works throughout the 16th century, such as the capitular houses, the posite, the reform of the parish temple and a bridge, absolutely necessary to unite the town with the site of the Fuenmayor, where the mills of the secretary Cobos were located, by which the neighbors were required to pass. In the population, the only one who had a privilege to build mills was Cobos and his wife, Maria de Mendoza. Their control assured them of a safe income, so it was absolutely necessary to keep the bridge in good condition.
Dead Cobos, Mrs. Maria de Mendoza, through his butler Bartolomé Ximénez, ordered the Council to make a new bridge, as the old man was destroyed by a heavy storm. The project was carried out by Andrés de Vandelvira, an architect at the service of the family of Cobos. According to María José Sánchez Lozano the works began in 1561, and the following year the Council agreed that all that was left to rise from it should be done according to the trace of Andrés de Vandelvira: "(...) I saw what is left to be made of the work of the bridge that is to be done in the river of the said villa for the passage of the mills of the bread of his lordship (...) command that everything that is left to be made of the bridge be done by the trace that has given Andrés de Vandelvira (...). The bridge, which is currently preserved, although removed, is made of stone and has a single half-point eye rather high, as the ravine on which it rises is very deep in this area.
Vandelvira draws a bridge without great pretensions, without decorative attachments, in which security and permanence in time must take precedence over other aspects. Vandelvira will be an experienced bridge builder, sometimes simple as this one of Torres, others of great architectural and engineering monumental, such as those raised on the channels of the Guadalmena, Guadalimar (Ariza) and Guadalquivir (Mazuecos) rivers.
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