In the month of February 1640 the Earth had shaken in Granada, and the same happened in the month of October; bread was scarce in the city in the month of May and at the beginning of July Berber pirates pillaged Gualchos whereas, in the same month, French ships defeated the navy of the Indies that set sail from the port of Cadiz. So much misfortune was relieved by a popular exaltation around the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary.
It all is included in the book “Triunfales celebraciones”, a printed work of which there are few copies (National Library of Madrid and University of Granada), and specially conceived, according to Miguel Luis López-Guadalupe Muñoz, “to recreate in the reader the sensations and feelings lived in that period of paroxysm”. Always according to the author of the preliminary study of this facsimile edition, “this book intends to revive memories in full detail of the particulars of a celebration that must not fall into oblivion.”
Among the many contents of the work published by the UGR in collaboration with the Federation of Cofradías of Granada also stands out one of the most important anthologies of poetry of Granada of the 17th century. The first part of the book discovery of the defamatory paper at the doors of the town council of Granada, “a sacrilegious work –the author of the preliminary study says– that demands the intervention of the Inquisition. Given the seriousness of the case, in the following days the Real Acuerdo of the Chancery and the local Town Council gather to designate special commissioners”.
Miguel Luis López Guadalupe offers a chronology of the events that happened in Granada from the Holy Week of 1640 in which the defamatory libel appears, to the 16th of December, day of the auto-da-fé in the Convent of Santa Cruz la Real. Among the accused there was a hermit who confessed to have published the libel.
López-Guadalupe says that then, “the city was filled with exaltation for several months. Even when the flood of religious demonstrations was limited, they were celebrated particularly, especially on Sunday, and at the end the inhabitants of Granada returned massively to the streets. A respite in the midst of adversity”.
Reference: Prof Miguel L. López-Guadalupe Muñoz. Dpt of Modern and American History. Phone number: 958 24 3660 / 243661. E-mail. hmoderna@ucartuja.ugr.es
