Other authors linked to the land

The saw that spoke to him in verse

Francisco de Quevedo arrived in the Sierra de Segura as he who enters a territory where nature and the word are mutually recognized. Between abrupt mountains, white villages and the rumor of Guadalquivir, the poet found a landscape that seemed made for his acute look and his luminous irony. In Beas de Segura and Segura de la Sierra he lived with friends, talked, wrote and left verses that still seem to be attached to the ancient stones.

For Quevedo, these lands were more than a refuge: they were a scene of inspiration. In his poems appear the summits, the valleys, the clean light of the serrano dawn. He called Segura "a cork of the world," as if the mountain itself was proud to touch the sky. And in his letters and writings he made a record of his travels, of the people he knew, of the life that was beating in every corner. Its passage through these lands is part of that secret map that unites literature and landscape, word and memory.

Cervantes crossed Jaén as a traveller, but left in her flashes of eternal literature

Miguel de Cervantes traveled the province of Jaén not as a famous writer, but as a man forced to make a living on the roads. Between 1591 and 1592, while he was a contribution collector, he went through villages, sales and landscapes that today retain the silent mark of his passage. Linares, Martos, Porcilla, Arjona, Lopera, Arjonilla, Begíjar, Alcaudete, Villanueva del Archbishop, Ubeda, Baeza and the capital itself: they are all part of that Cervantine map that history has been rebuilding.

In Lopera, documentation is kept that confirms his presence, as if time had wanted to leave a test of that tired journey. And although Cervantes did not come to Jaén in search of inspiration, literature ended up finding him.

The famous "adventure of the dead body" of Stay down. seems to drink from a real episode on these lands: the transfer of the body of San Juan de la Cruz from Ubeda. Also in The work of Persiles and Sigismunda The Holy Veronica of Jaén and the Sanctuary of the Virgin of the Head appear, signs that the province was recorded in its memory. His steps, almost anonymous then, are now part of the literary landscape of the province.

Cela and the living portrait of the province

Camilo José Cela arrived in Jaén with the curious look of the traveler who not only watches, but listens. In First Andalusian trip He recorded this meeting: an entire chapter dedicated to the province, where the streets of Ubeda and Baeza, the slopes of Jaén capital and the villages scattered among olive trees become living scenarios, described with their fine irony and total writer sensitivity.

He didn't come alone. This book, published in 1959, was a project shared with two exceptional jiennese artists: Rafael Zabaleta and Lorenzo Goñi, whose illustrations dialogue with the text as if the word and the piece were mutually recognized. Together they built a work that is, at the same time, portrait, chronicle and tribute.

Cela, an essential figure in the literature of the 20th century and Nobel Prize in 1989, also maintained a close relationship with authors and editors of the province. In his pages, Jaén appears as a territory that surprises, causes, invites him to look more slowly. A place where the writer found material for his direct, sometimes rough, always lucid style.

The Jiennese voice that turned exile into memory and memory into literature

Manuel Andújar was born in La Carolina, but his life - marked by war, exile and return - made him a writer of borders, of wounded memories and of identities in transit. His work is a territory where nostalgia, dignity and the search for a place of his own in a world that often falls apart.

From very young he moved between cities: Málaga, Madrid, Lérida, Barcelona. Then came the Civil War and, with it, the banishment. France first, Mexico later. There, far from his land, Andújar found a community of exiles with which he shared words, ideas and cultural resistance. He founded magazines, collaborated with publishers, wrote novels and stories that are testimony to a broken but not defeated generation.

His literature, a legacy of Galdós and the Generation of 98, has the strength of the lived and the lucidity of those who observe the world from a distance. The memory of La Carolina, the hardness of exile, the human fragility and the hope that persists even in the darkest times, appears on its pages.

When he returned to Spain in 1967, he brought with him not only his work, but also the voice of all those who could not return. Today, Manuel Andújar is one of the essential figures to understand the literature of Spanish exile and, at the same time, one of the deepest voices born in the land of Jaén.

The woman who turned the word into freedom and freedom into a legacy

Patrocio de Biedma was born in Begíjar (Jaén) when the 19th century advanced with uncertain passage, but she decided to walk ahead of her time. Writer, journalist, intuitive feminist before the word existed as such, was a woman who turned literature into a space of freedom. At a time when few women could publish, Patrocino not only wrote: he directed magazines, founded literary circles and opened his way in national and international newspapers with a strong and bright voice.

His work - poetry, novels, stories, articles - breathes a mixture of sensitivity and determination. His texts perceive the look of a woman who looks at the world with lucidity, who denounces injustices, who defends education and culture as tools for progress. From Cadiz, where he founded the magazine Cadiz, to Andalusia, where he presided over the Literary Federation, his influence spread as a network of thought and modernity.

But he always took the jiennese root with him. Begijar, his native land, appears as an emotional starting point, a place that formed it and returned to it in memory. Sponsorship of Biedma is one of those figures that history sometimes leaves on the margins, but whose life and work illuminate the path of those who came after. It was, in essence, a woman who wrote to open doors.

The Jiennese guardian who turned art into a lasting memory

Rafael Láinez Alcalá was born in Peal de Becerro in the late 19th century, in a land where history is mixed with the rumor of olive groves. From a very young age he showed an insatiable curiosity: he wrote, researched, observed art as he who disfigures an ancient language. His passage through Ubeda and Baeza put him in contact with Antonio Machado, an encounter that left a deep mark on his literary sensitivity.

Over time, Lainez Alcalá became a broad-looking scholar. He was a correspondent, articulist, professor and, finally, professor of Art History in La Laguna and Salamanca. There, between classrooms and archives, he developed a rigorous and passionate work, dedicated to understanding how art reveals the identity of a people.

His writing - essays, studies, articles - breathes respect for tradition and a clear will to preserve cultural memory. He did not seek prominence, but his legacy is solid: a personal archive that he generously donated to his native people and which today constitutes a documentary treasure to understand the artistic history of Jaén and Spain.

Rafael Lainez Alcalá was, in essence, a bridge between the land that saw him born and the vast world of knowledge. A man who made the study a form of love for his origin.

The creator of the "Jiennense Macondo"

David Uclés, a natural of Ubeda, is a Spanish writer, musician, cartoonist and translator whose work has entered the national and international literary landscape with strength. Formed in Translation and Interpretation and in Foreign Languages, he studied in Córdoba, Münster and Granada, and worked as a professor in Germany, France and Switzerland.

His narrative moves between magic realism, family memory and symbolic recreation of the Andalusian rural world. With his third novel, The peninsula of empty houses, achieved an extraordinary success: over 300,000 copies sold, translations into more than twelve languages and a long list of prizes, including the Chalamo Prize for Best Book of the Year 2024, the Andalusia of the Critics Prize, the Dulce Chacón Prize, the San Clemente Prize and the Kelvin 505 Prize.

In 2025 he was a Spanish candidate for the European Union Literature Prize and a finalist of the Vargas Llosa Biennale, consolidating himself as one of the most outstanding voices of his generation.

His most recent work, The city of the dead lightsHe won the 82nd Nadal Prize, confirming his literary projection. Uclés maintains a strong link to his land. Born in Ubeda and named Predilect Son in 2025, he has turned the context of Quesada and the memory of his family into the symbolic heart of his narrative universe, a territory he himself defines as his "Jiennese Macondo."