The monastery of San Ildefonso and San Juan de Mata, better known by its former name of Convento de las Trinitarias Descalzas de San Ildefonso, is a baroque architectural complex well known in Madrid because it is considered that Miguel De Cervantes is buried here.
It was founded in 1609 by Francisca Romero, daughter of Julián Romero, general of the armies of Philip II who stood out in Flanders. In 1673 the expansion works began but in 1688 they were paralyzed. Finally, in 1698, the work was completed.
Cervantes was buried in the primitive and modest church in 1616, although the exact location is currently unknown. The current church has the particularity of being surrounded by the convent. Here a natural daughter of Cervantes and Sister Marcela de San Félix, daughter of the writer Lope de Vega, were professed. His funeral procession detoured to pass in front of the convent so that her daughter could witness it from a window. Some of the furniture currently exhibited in the Lope de Vega House-Museum comes from this convent.
In the study carried out by Mariano Roca de Togores, Marquis of Molins, in 1870, it is suggested that Cervantes may have been buried in the vicinity of the cloister. Other arguments place it in a wall niche next to the orchard; and some inside the church, embedded in the convent, where there is a plaque that commemorates his burial and that of his wife, Catalina de Salazar, plus two tombstones of the temple's patrons, Sancho de la Cerda, deputy to the Duke of Medinaceli, and his wife María de Villena Melo, Portuguese noblewoman.
Sister Amada, prioress of the Trinitarian convent today, states: “If the archbishopric and the Spanish Academy authorize it, there is no problem for the search to be carried out.” After the efforts of the historian Fernando Prado before the Spanish Academy, Darío Villanueva, secretary of this institution, welcomed the new Cervantine rescue with enthusiasm. “The Academy gives its endorsement to an investigation based on a serious and credible proposal like this one,” the academic emphasizes.
It will be here? Will we find it in any case? Just because of the mystery and beauty of the interior of the convent, it is worth venturing out and trying to visit it in the rare moments when this is possible.
A abrazo.
Good evening: The team searching for Miguel de Cervantes in the Trinitarias church, where it is believed that he was buried, has found in one of the niches a coffin in poor condition and with the initials MC, and will now analyze whether the remains The interior corresponds to the writers, municipal sources reported this Sunday.