Thanks to an important documentation preserved in the Royal Chancery of Granada, published by J. P. Cruz Cabrera, we know a good part of its construction process. In the year 1561, work began according to a first layout designed by the stonemason from Baezano Ginés Martínez, with the material execution of the works falling on the stonemasons Juanes de la Carrera and Pedro de Mazuecos, residents of Canena and Úbeda, respectively. The intervention of Pedro de Mazuecos in this work led to the popularly known bridge as “de Mazuecos” since the 17th century.

The bridge designed by Ginés Martínez was of a single eye, wide span and 100 feet wide. Shortly after the start of the works, and after the inspections of various quarries, the project for this bridge, with its sloping and narrow profile, was abandoned and the construction of a larger one began immediately. From 1565 there is documentary evidence of the intervention in the work of the famous stonemason masters Andrés de Vandelvira and Francisco del Castillo “El Joven”, who gave a radical turn to the initial idea by projecting a monumental bridge more typical of a city that of a rural property. The traces, signed by both stonemasons and preserved in the cited documentation, allow us to know their configuration.

The elevation contemplates a large central semicircular arch measuring 33 meters between four thick semi-cylindrical pillars with cutwaters; the area facing the town of Jimena is embedded directly in the rock in a descending way and only a small discharge arch was carved; On the side facing Baeza, also descending, the composition is more complex due to the strong change in level, consisting of a culvert at the base and double line of semicircular arches in the manner of Roman aqueducts, of which only keep the lower one; In this area where the bridge passes, some vaulted stables with half a barrel were also installed, taking advantage of the arches for rooms.

Stables and rooms, which were closed, were used for storage and were even rented. The work as a whole presented a careful aesthetic, both in terms of its architectural composition and its decorative details; the windowsills, the balls of the finials, the gussets of the pillars, the double-threaded molding of the great central arch, the tondos of the spandrels, among other elements, certainly embellished its image, radically disfigured after the intervention carried out as a result of the collapse of the great central arch at the beginning of the 20th century; the central arch was replaced by a lintel metallic structure and to adapt it to road traffic other original compositional elements disappear.

Vandelvira and Castillo show on this bridge, once again, their extensive knowledge of classicism as well as an extraordinary practice of stereotomy or cutting of quarry stone. The Mazuecos bridge, which bears, especially in the double thread of the central arch, a great similarity to that of Ariza, also the work of Vandelvira, it can be related to that of Benamejí (Córdoba), made by Hernán Ruiz "El Mozo ”Between the years 1550-1556. Vandelvira and Castillo, perhaps more intensely, conceive of a bridge in which clearly Italianizing ornamental and construction details are inserted. It should not be forgotten, however, that Vandelvira will be the one who will carry the bulk of the work, Castillo participating with him in the appraisals. In addition, without detracting from Castillo's contribution, when he works on the Mazuecos bridge, Vandelvira is already an experienced architect in this type of works, as those carried out by commission from the Úbeda Council on the Ariza bridge over the riverbed of the Guadalimar, more distant those practiced in the great bridge of San Pablo in Cuenca, and, at the same time, those of the bridge over the Guadalmena river, between the current terms of Siles (Jaén) and Montiel (Ciudad Real), to the Order of Santiago, whose monumental remains are still ruinous on its shores.