Murcia, Mar 18 (EFE).- In the heart of Murcia, eleven cloistered nuns live in the privileged environment of the Santa Ana convent, six hectares for which these Dominicans requested in 2016 the protection of cultural interest (BIC). which will be a reality shortly as the regional government has accepted his request.
From the Alfonso X El Sabio promenade, where it is located, you can only see the façade of the church and the entrance door to the convent, which makes it difficult to intuit the enormous heritage that lies behind those walls, not only because of its size, but because of the multiple works of baroque art that it treasures among paintings, sculptures, fabrics, jewelery, goldsmithing and historical books and documents.
“We know very well what we have and where we are,” Sister Isabel María, prioress of the convent, told Efe in an interview on the occasion of the start of the BIC file, for which she signed the request that included only the two main buildings: the church, the only part open to the public, although daily or Sunday masses are no longer celebrated there, and the convent, where the eleven sisters reside, six of them over 85 years of age.
That is why she felt very upset when she received a press clipping on her mobile phone in which the Association for the Conservation of the Heritage of the Huerta de Murcia made public the start of the file and explained that it had requested it in 2017, one year after them, and later taken to the Ombudsman.
“It has bothered us a lot that no one from that association, of which we were unaware, has contacted us in all this time to tell us that they were going to request the BIC and even more so that we are related to complaints before the Ombudsman than ever before. we have issued”, he insists.
He says that the administrations were cooperative at all times, since a few months after submitting the request, technicians from the General Directorate of Heritage visited the facilities and they were the ones who suggested extending the scope of protection to the orchard attached to the convent as well. .
It is the space of the largest complex and in it grow mainly orange, mandarin and lemon trees, as well as some palm trees, avocado trees and plum trees whose fruits are used by the nuns to make the sweets that they have been selling for more than six decades and which, according to the prioress, are , “the source of livelihood” of their community.
This space is a particularly unique element because it preserves the traditional irrigation system by flooding the Murcian orchard with water from the historic Aljufía main ditch that passes under its soil.
After the visit of the technicians, the congregation received a notification that the procedures for the protection would be set in motion and they have waited these five years patiently. The administration now has another two to formalize the figure of protection.
The convent of Las Anas, as it is popularly known, was established in 1490 by a group of Dominican women from Jaén. Then it was nothing more than “a chapel and a house”, properties that were increased over the years to the current set.
The church, the best known part, is the third of those that it has had and its dimensions are much larger than usual for a cloistered center, explains the prioress, with a main altarpiece with 13 sculptures by Francisco Salzillo made in different stages, of which that of Santa Ana is considered one of the masterpieces of Baroque imagery.
Virginia Vadillo