Historical data

The data relating to the medieval Génave are scarce, but it must have been one of the many foothills that populated the Sierra de Segura. A fortification or tower was probably built between the 11th and 13th centuries in the face of the advance of Christian armies.

After the Christian conquest, between 1235 and 1239, Géave and the whole Sierra de Segura were controlled by the Order of Santiago's Order and they had to endure the raison and attacks of intimidation of Saracena troops, so this and other torreons acted as a parapet in these war skirmishes and as a shelter for the population.

The chronicles written at the end of the Middle Ages, such as those of Don Francisco de León in 1468 or the Relations of Philip II of 1575, speak of the tower without any reference to a castle or enclosure of important dimensions, so it had to replace the ancient Islamic fortress.

Until 1551 Génave was the village of Segura de la Sierra, from that year on he received the privilege of Villa de orden de Felipe II.

In 1575 Génave is included in the Chancellery district of Granada, it depends on the archbishopric of Toledo and the Kingdom of Murcia before the Cortes, although it is directly under the governorate of Segura de la Sierra.

Description

This tower, surrounded by buildings that cover its bottom, is built in irregular masonry.

It has a square floor of 10.50 m on its side, and in its interior two overlapping rooms are kept covered with half-canyon vaults. To access each of them, as well as the roof, there is a staircase embedded in the thickness of the walls covered with the same type of vault.

The access is now made through a building that houses the Adult Center of the town and which was previously the seat of the City Council.

The tower was declared in 1985 Good of Cultural Interest.

This castle reached the second-rank level at the time of the Constable Iranzo, played an important role in taking sides, like Andújar, on the realistic side when in 1465 the king's enemies placed Jaén, and became famous when, six years later, the warden Diego Frías stopped and ordered a rival of the Constable, Don Fernando de Acuña, son of the Count of Buendía and no less than nephew of the Archbishop of Toledo, to be locked in his tower.
In fact, the castle, of small dimensions, was formed by a cylindrical tower with an almond parapet, as Martin drew it from Ximena Jurado. A stone from the upper tower seems to have an inscription, probably Arabic. There is no trace of this tower in the village. However, the head of the church presents a lock that could correspond to the remains of the castle. This solid semicircular wall of masonry could be reused from a large round tower, sister of those of the Rus and El Marmol castles, in the lands of Baeza.
This turret was declared Good of Cultural Interest in 1985.

The original place of worship would be made up of a grotto in the rocky massif and a source; in front of that it is possible to emerge at different times, successive buildings of worship; for the oldest one it is kept news of its rectangular plant, and it is suspected a chronology of the centuries V- IV BC; for the most recent the dating managed would place it in the first century or perhaps before; the Shrine would already work from before the construction of the first building and would continue to do so, at least until the fourth century, after the destruction of the second building towards the third century AD. It seems that the exvotes, in the vast majority or in their entirety bronze figures, "Fury primitivement dépossées dans la caverne, et jetées de temps a autre sur la pente, mais jamais aucune fosse ne fut creusée pour les recevoir," which prevents the existence of a reliable strategy, which is aggravated by the precarious conditions of the excavation, at the beginning of the century, of the site. It is not unlikely, as one of the excavators suggested, that the religious whole should also be completed with a sacred forest, from whose branches the devotees would hang part of the offerings.

Today we see olive trees around the sanctuary but we must think of forest areas with some clear for cultivation, highlighting on the high Iznatoraf as the most important villa of the advance to the north of the Guadalquivir.

Little by little this situation of danger is disappearing, new inhabitants arrive and places are beginning to live outside the walls of the villa until it is necessary to disconnect them from the municipality. The inhabitants of the Moraleja in 1396 knew the autonomy with respect to Iznatoraf, going on to be called since then Villanueva del Archbishop.

It tells an ancient legend that in Muslim times there was a group of MozArabs in Iznatoraf with a great devotion to the virgin Mary. The king's wife showed some interest in the Christian religion by helping them in all that she could. When her husband, known as Alimenon, found out, he ordered that they take his wife into the forest and cut off her hands and take her eyes out to die in the most absolute solitude. The woman called on the virgin Mary, who presented herself and made a fountain sprout to wash her wounds. Miraculously he healed and the virgin ordered him to go up to her husband so that, being aware of the miracle, they would be baptized in the fountain and set up a temple in his honor.

The Sanctuary and the virgin of the Fuensana is one of the oldest in Spain and it is known that it existed in 1291 already as an important pilgrimage center on the border lands. The building is of three Gothic-style ships, although there are still some Romanesque reminiscent, such as a beautiful medieval mudejar tile. The virgin of the Fuensana is sold in a baroque shrimp of the 17th century.

u external appearance is low stylized but viscous by its volumetric contrasts. Made of masonry, the cover framed by molded cornice opens with a half-point arch on imposts with smooth transdotes. On its axis is raised a high swordsman of two bodies, the lower one with two arches also of half point and the upper one with one, triangular front and vases. It keeps a cover in a carved stone that belonged to the Marquis de la Cueva palace.

Its plant is rectangular and consists of a single ship covered with false plaster canyon vault, with false fajon arches that are based on arquitrabed pilasters. Both the ship and the presbyterium - which is accessed by a reduced spinal arch and covered with a half-orange vault on the breast - are decorated with geometric and plant thematic motifs. The choir stands at the feet and is supported by two columns with shoes. The shrimp has a polygonal plant, was built in the early 18th century and has undergone various reforms and modifications.

It is possible that the devotion to the Virgin of Cuadros may be extended to the Middle Ages as it corresponds to a very active region militarily in the Christian conquest and with a primarily agricultural activity. The relaunch of his worship was based on the model of popular religiosity promoted by the Council of Trent and on the ecclesiastical policy carried out in the province by Bishop Dávila. The importance of both the process and the claim of the pilgrimage of rosemary of the Sanctuary of the Virgin of Cuadros exceeds its artistic and monumental value.