The last journey of Juana I of Castile

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The mythical journey of a Juana I of Castile with her husband's coffin in tow is the story of a poorly told story.

Why?

Because that image of a twenty-eight-year-old young Juana, in love beyond the death of her tragically deceased husband in the prime of life,

, a

from the 16th century.

Juana was screwed up brown and we continue on those.

Juana's journey through Castile has passed into the popular imagination as it was conceived in Romanticism: as a very long and exhausting journey in which Juana continually opened Felipe's coffin so that his

stunnedness would not decay. The reality was not such, since it was limited to covering, in six stages, short distances

.

The first of these stages takes her

.

It begins when Juana unearths (because, hey, they already had it buried) Felipe's corpse, puts it in a car and says that everyone goes to Granada.

.

Juana was a cultured and well-traveled woman who knew distances well.

He was not delirious when he decided to cross the Iberian Peninsula with a corpse: he wanted to embark on a

journey

Juana was pregnant.

At the height of Torquemada (what were they doing in Torquemada, if not choosing the longest road to Granada?),

.

The men who go with her - whom Pradilla portrays in her painting with a gesture of certain weariness - decide that we must stop, the queen does not go to give birth to them on a dusty road.

Thus, Juana spends four months in Torquemada. He bore his sixth daughter, Catalina, who would become Queen of Portugal. During that time,

, a superb temple that is well worth a visit. In memory of those days, at its doors there is a bust of Catalina in which the then still Infanta wears a serious face. It was not be for lowerly.

From Torquemada, they moved to

(second stage) because the plague threatened them. It seems that sanitary confinements are a matter of today, but no: Juana was isolated so that she would not be infected. Apparently, Felipe is put in the monastery of Santa María de Escobar, who has disappeared for centuries. The romantics return here to feast on Juana: according to them, when Juana realizes that the monastery is owned by nuns and not by friars, she decides, jealous, to remove Felipe from it. Jealous! They are Cistercian nuns and Felipe has been dead for months, but to Juana, poor madwoman, it seems that her husband's love could be stolen.

: Felipe's coffin was guarded by a checkpoint of Carthusian monks from the Cartuja de Miraflores, in Burgos (where Felipe had been buried), and

the ones who could not relate to women, no matter how nuns they were.

Panoramic view of Tórtoles de Esgueva.ROWAN WIND WHISTLER

In Hornillos, Juana stays for another four months.

From there, they will go to

(third stage).

That is, they return to the current province of Burgos.

Anything less follow the straight line towards Granada.

In Tórtoles, King Fernando, Juana's father, appears. He says that it cannot be, that you look at yourself as you walk, that Tórtoles does not meet the necessary conditions to house a queen, an infanta and a corpse, and that they all better return to Burgos. Juana, who hugs her father but does not trust him a hair, weighs her possibilities. At this point, no one is beating around the bush: Juana knows that her father wants to steal from her and Fernando does not hide that he plans to use the trump card of Juana's madness to snatch the crown of Castile from her. Anyway, she has it easy:

Juana gives in, at least in part, because she has no other choice. She is not nearly as powerful as her father. And she is, oh, a woman. So the delegation moves (fourth stage) to

, again near the city of Burgos. The journey is becoming circular. The

kept Felipe's coffin during the time it remained in Santa María.

This does not satisfy Fernando at all, who is not doing well that Juana is in Santa María, and tries to take her to Burgos, where it is easier to control her.

Juana refuses and negotiates: she agrees to go to

(fifth stage).

In Arcos, Felipe is housed in the church of San Miguel Arcángel -which has a stupendous Mudejar tower-, and Juana in the archiepiscopal palace, sober and Castilian on all four sides.

In Arcos, Juana will spend a year and a half.

From time to time, he asks to see if he can continue with his trip to Granada, but Fernando, in the capital, tells him no, that these are matters that must be thought about calmly.

Juana promises them happy.

His fight to keep Felipe's corpse by his side, his fight to preserve his widowhood, has triumphed.

Fernando renounces to marry her, because, at this point, he already has a plan B:

.

The Duero River as it passes through Tordesillas.JOSÉ LUIS CERNADAS

This plan has a weak point

: Sooner or later, Juana will talk to anyone and she will do it with the usual correction in her.

And, of course, if someone can have a coherent conversation for five minutes, they can rule a country.

So Fernando decides to cover his back and determines that the stay in Arcos is over.

Juana must be locked up for life so that she never talks to anyone.

So we arrive at the sixth and final stage of Juana's journey:

, southwest of the city of Valladolid.

Felipe's accommodation in Tordesillas is the Santa Clara monastery, a fantastic example of Mudejar art.

Juana and Catalina, meanwhile, are

in the royal palace of Tordesillas, now disappeared.

There, the legitimate queen of Castile will remain locked up for forty-six years.

Forty-six.

It is said soon.

Even if he had been insane, didn't he deserve a more humane treatment?

They locked her up forever, like the worst criminals.

TO KNOW MORE

In his new novel,

(La Esfera de los Libros), the writer Álber Vázquez recreates, in the key of a

historical

, the life of the most unfortunate sovereign in our history.

After being widowed, Juana has to get the necessary support to be able to govern, at a time when everyone hides their motivations.

Meanwhile, the corpse of her husband is about to wander through the fields of Castile.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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