Breaking News: El Cortijo del Fraile designated a Cultural Site

El Cortijo del Fraile and is a Site of Cultural Interest


The Governing Council has agreed to enroll in the General Catalogue of the Andalusian Historical Heritage, with the title Historic Site, the place where Lorca was inspired to write 'Blood Wedding'

Today in response to the historical demand of the province of Almería: the protection of Cortijo del Fraile, in Níjar. The Governing Council of the Board agreed this morning to enroll it in the General Catalogue of the Andalusian Historical Heritage, as an Historic Site. This complex, dating from the eighteenth century, is closely linked to the play 'Blood Wedding' by poet and playwright Federico García Lorca, who was inspired by the passionate crime occurred at the site to write one of his best known works.

Located within the Natural Park of Cabo de Gata-Nijar, the enclave will be protected today as a Cultural Location (BIC) it is also a milestone for the unique landscape it provides a contrast of their groves, cisterns and wells in an arid environment and low vegetation. The decree declared a Historic Site delimits an area of 15,576 square meters, which includes farm buildings and infrastructures of water supply (wells and boreholes), three of which were paved with round or elliptical mortar. The rule also provides additional security for the environment of 212,416 meters square around the farm.

Besides its literary and artistic interest, which still evokes the memory of a traditional rural culture based on the values of the class and honor, the Cortijo del Fraile is also an outstanding example of rural architecture of the southeastern Almería agricultural and farming, typology Levantine.

Although 'Blood Wedding', released in 1933, added new characters and scenarios, the place is part of the symbolic itinerary of places dedicated to the memory of Lorca. Almeria journalist and writer Carmen de Burgos' Colombine ', based his book on the Níjar crime, which occurred at the farm, to write ‘Puñal de claveles’.

The Ministry of Culture started this process, through the Directorate General of Cultural Property in March 2010. Paulino Plata and the counselor left on his first visit to Almeria culminating late in the first quarter of 2011 or early in the second. "The delegations of Government and Culture negotiated with the owners a possible swap to pass the land into public hands and then undertake a reclamation project," he said.

In this respect, spoke just days ago the Delegate of Culture, Yolanda Alley. "The Andalusian government is negotiating with the landlord, but it is private property and it will have to be seen how far they want to go, everyone understands that the property has value," she stated.

According to the Spanish Historical Heritage Act, the statutory declaration called a Cultural is a protection that, in this case applies to a place or natural area, linked to events or memories of the past, folk traditions, cultural creations or nature, and man's works, which have historical, ethnological, palaeontological or antropolótico. Rio Tinto Mines, Huelva, are Historic Site.

Property Details

El Cortijo del Fraile was built by Dominican friars of Almeria in the eighteenth century as a center of a major farm with olive trees and vines. During the confiscation of Mendizábal in 1836, the estate was divided and passed into the hands of several owners who eventually sold it to a bourgeois family who built the shrine Almeria and used it as a family vault to 80.

The total constructed area has a large trapezoidal, with spaces that are organized around a large central courtyard patio and where the landlord's house and the chapel are clearly distinguishable from the houses of the tenants and the pastor, who stayed near the agroganaderas.

The cottage is built with masonry walls covered with plaster stucco and roofed with planks and mud mortar with tile or alfarjes curve. The chapel that stands is special for its size, rectangular in shape, with a barrel vault and a pitched roof, and a small bell tower.

The location was used in several Euro-westerns including; “For a Few Dollars More”, “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” and “A Bullet for the General” among others.