Description
Contemplating the sanctuary building comes to mind memories of border life. The almenada tower and the robustness of the walls refer to other times when the danger of war was present in the daily lives of the people who lived in the village of the Moraleja. Without ever losing sight of Iznatoraf as a villa from which the different places that have ended up giving rise to the Sierra de las Cuatro Villas were torn.
Today we see olive trees around the sanctuary but we must think of forest areas with some clear for cultivation, highlighting on the high Iznatoraf as the most important villa of the advance to the north of the Guadalquivir.
Little by little this situation of danger is disappearing, new inhabitants arrive and places are beginning to live outside the walls of the villa until it is necessary to disconnect them from the municipality. The inhabitants of the Moraleja in 1396 knew the autonomy with respect to Iznatoraf, going on to be called since then Villanueva del Archbishop.
It tells an ancient legend that in Muslim times there was a group of MozArabs in Iznatoraf with a great devotion to the virgin Mary. The king's wife showed some interest in the Christian religion by helping them in all that she could. When her husband, known as Alimenon, found out, he ordered that they take his wife into the forest and cut off her hands and take her eyes out to die in the most absolute solitude. The woman called on the virgin Mary, who presented herself and made a fountain sprout to wash her wounds. Miraculously he healed and the virgin ordered him to go up to her husband so that, being aware of the miracle, they would be baptized in the fountain and set up a temple in his honor.
The Sanctuary and the virgin of the Fuensana is one of the oldest in Spain and it is known that it existed in 1291 already as an important pilgrimage center on the border lands. The building is of three Gothic-style ships, although there are still some Romanesque reminiscent, such as a beautiful medieval mudejar tile. The virgin of the Fuensana is sold in a baroque shrimp of the 17th century.
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