San Esteban of Guadalajara

Abstract

After the reconquest of the city of Guadalajara, a parochial network was built in which each Church or parish, in addition to fulfilling its religious function, it was a fiscal municipal cell and a military recruitment. Were founded ten parishes, that served to configure the urban fabric of a population founded to play, mostly, a defensive function. During the Middle Ages Guadalajara also had four convents, a number that was increased with six new foundations in the sixteenth century, and four more in the 17th century. The religious function was decisive in the configuration of the urban landscape of the city because there is a direct relationship between the configuration of any city and the functions that are developed in it, therefore, its evolution is, to a large degree, a consequence of the changes that have taken place in it. The drastic reduction of religious activity of the nineteenth century, with the different confiscations carried out and the suppression of a large number of parishes, determined that important interior reforms could be made in the city, at the same time as the large spaces, reserved until then for religious institutions, it served as land reserve for the urban developments, that were made from that moment. After the approval of the FGUP, many of its historic buildings were demolished. If the architectural losses have been important, it has also been important, the urban actions of internal reforms carried out simultaneously. Within this context is the missing temple of San Esteban, one of the parishes suppressed in 1831, whose church was later used as a convent temple of a congregation of Jeronimas nuns until it disappeared completely. San Esteban was a temple of three naves with two semicircular apses, tower and atrium. It was a Mudejar construction.