Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer in Tudela

Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer was in Tudela one day in mid-April 1864. He arrived at Tudela station in the morning, having spent the entire night on the train from Madrid. He took the stagecoach to Tarazona and then made his way to the Monastery of Veruela, the final stage of his journey, which he vividly recounts in the first of his Letters from My Cell.

The Bécquer brothers knew the Soria surroundings of Moncayo not only on the occasion of having visited their uncle Curro who had lived in Soria since the 1850s, but also because Gustavo was married to Casta Esteban, and the couple spent the summers of 1861 and 1862 in Noviercas, a town where Casta had a house, from where they could make excursions to the surrounding areas and possibly take the waters at the Fitero Spa, perhaps as early as the summer of 1861. It would have taken the Bécquer couple just over two hours to make a getaway to Tudela, since from Tudela do you go by stagecoach to Fitero?

In the three stages of this symbolic journey to the past narrated in the First Letter (the railway, the Modern Age; the stagecoach, the beginning of the 19th century; the cavalry, ancient times), from Madrid to Veruela, and in whose interpretation several Becquerists agree since Marcos Castillo pointed it out, Tudela is found as the terminus station - and a second-class one, by all accounts - of the modern era.

Tudela, in the spring of 1864, was a large town with nearly 8,000 inhabitants, living mainly on agriculture, livestock, and a significant portion of commerce. Its influence radiated over a wide region, but its authority was balanced—if not overshadowed—by the neighboring and older Tarazona. Bécquer notes: "Tarazona is a small and ancient city: further removed from the hustle and bustle than Tudela, it doesn't show the same progress, but it has a more original and artistic character."

The railway, the means of transport used by Gustavo Adolfo on the first leg of his journey from Madrid, had arrived in Tudela two years earlier, specifically on April 29, 1861.

At that time, the train station was on the outskirts of the city, and it was necessary to head towards the center along the so-called Camino de Zaragoza, a road leading to this town and flanked by vacant lots or the walls of the large corrals on the outskirts. Gustavo Adolfo headed towards the center, first passing through the so-called Paseo Nuevo (today the very pleasant and much-frequented Paseo de Invierno). At the far right of that public space, the new bullring had been built in 1842, "circular and more comfortable than the one in use," which was none other than the main or Plaza de la Constitución, currently Plaza de los Fueros, which was built between 1687 and 1691.

From the Paseo Nuevo to the Plazuela de Zaragoza, there are barely a hundred and fifty meters of gentle descent, from which perspective Gustavo Adolfo could see the towers of the Cathedral standing out in front of the bare clay hill of Santa Bárbara where the defiant mass of the Muslim citadel had once stood, which was transformed, over the centuries, into the castle of the Christian kings of Navarre until 1516, when Cardinal Cisneros ordered the demolition of what remained of the citadel and walls in Tudela, leaving in sight only the first floor of the keep, quite battered by the way, and a few huge pieces of land scattered along the slopes, just as he would have seen in Soria, for example, on the castle hill.

He was also able to see the Mudejar towers of the Dean's Palace, the official residence of the Dean of Tudela, the ecclesiastical superior of the Collegiate Church, who in that year, 1864, was Don Celedonio Oviedo. In the mid-19th century, the city's commercial life was centered in the heart of the old city, around Plaza de San Jaime, a true economic and social center, continuing the Muslim tradition that had then established the market and possibly the Alcaicería (alcaicería) in that area. According to my good friend's intuition, this market may have been located in an alley, now a dead end, off Calle del Juicio. Shops were scattered throughout the streets but were most concentrated in Plaza de San Jaime, Carnicerías, Calle del Roso, Rúa, Plaza Vieja, the two Concareras (upper and lower), and Mercado de Cristina. Meat and seafood were obligatory items to be sold here; other goods could be sold in any store.

At this point on the Zaragoza road, which widens slightly, Bécquer and his guide turn left onto Carrera de las Monjas, or simply Carrera, at the start of which the street is flanked by two buildings, the one on the right being the Palacete del Marqués de Montesa, an elegant mansion built in the second half of the 18th century, with its enormous and stately belvedere, added later, and neoclassical touches (which can be seen in the pediments above the balconies). The exterior view of this Palace would serve to evoke in Bécquer what he had left behind in Madrid: the social life of the salons and their smaller-scale variant, the tertulias. In small towns, tertulias were common, and it was the most pleasant way to spend the last part of the day at all times of the year.

Directly opposite the Montesa Palace and across the street, on the left sidewalk, the first building was a large mansion with a vast backyard where horses and carriages were kept and where stagecoaches stopped. In the mid-19th century, it was an inn owned by Don Benito Gaztambide.

A curious street, this one, Carrera, which Bécquer took with his guide on his way to the Plaza de la Constitución (then known as the Constitution Square). Curious because, despite its relative modernity, it's surprising that it's not straight, but rather describes an arc and narrows in the third closest to the Plaza. In 1864, an irrigation ditch that ran through it was covered with flagstone, a measure that partly alleviated the rurality of the most sic (chic) street in Tudela, according to Mariano Sáinz.

Behind Gaztambide's house was the entrance gate to the convent of the Poor Clares, who had given their surname to La Carrera (the Nuns) since they settled there in the 16th century, occupying a large block by building a convent, church, orchard, and courtyards. Around 1970, an ambitious urban development project transformed the convent into a block of houses with an interior plaza. The complex is popularly known as Las Claras, in memory of these cloistered nuns who currently maintain a modern convent on the outskirts.

To the left and right, old and new buildings were inhabited by the most enlightened members of Tudela society who could afford to rent an apartment. Although some owners lived in their houses on the Carrera, they were large enough to rent out to entire families who, almost without exception, also lived with one or two servants between the ages of 12 and 25, almost the age limit for entering the profession and leaving the profession. A few distinguished shops opened on the ground floor where the city's budding bourgeoisie could stock up on unique items or dress according to the current fashions, such as in the tailor's shop of the Englishman (from Gibraltar), Mr. Juan Emmi. Or workshops, such as that of the sculptor Julián Jaray or the typography of Mr. Pablo Doumert (whom it is said no one had the pleasure of seeing laugh); all three, incidentally, distinguished members of the republican ideology and active members of their local committee.

Bécquer, now settled after lunch in a coach so well-stocked with customers that it seems more like a bus, continues with his vivid description of everything happening and surrounding him. We imagine the coach crossing the Plaza practically at a gallop, because shortly after entering the left archway onto Calle del Trinquete (so named because the ball court is located on that street, to the right, toward the banks of the Queíles River), a gradual uphill slope begins where the mules would have to pull the carriage hard: Cuesta de Loreto, on the Cascante road, which had been converted into a highway in 1860, and which reached the top of the cemetery from where a panoramic view of Tudela could be enjoyed. A few meters further on, The towers of Tudela disappeared behind a hill bordered by vineyards and olive groves, fields that accompany travelers to Tarazona, Bécquer dismissing the city forever from his poetic universe, albeit in a simple but enormously lyrical manner.