Lovers of Teruel

Lovers of Teruel
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By m.p. - Jun 17, 2009 - 9:47 AM
Forty five candidates are up for election as one of Spain’s Ten Treasures of Intangible Heritage in a public vote organised by the International Bureau of Cultural Capitals this June

The Lovers of Teruel tomb - Wikipedia

Two of those positions will be automatically taken by the Patum of Berga festival and the Mystery Play of Elche, both of which already hold Intangible Cultural Heritage status from Unesco.

One of the nominees is the legend of the Lovers of Teruel, a tragic love story which takes place in the Teruel of the early 13th century. It tells the tale of two young lovers, Isabel de Segura and Juan Martínez de Marcilla – also known as Diego - which is recreated in the city with the festival ‘Las Bodas de Isabel de Segura’, which has been held there every February since 1996.

The two young people were childhood friends and, so the story goes, as they grew older, that friendship blossomed into love and they decided they wanted to marry. Isabel’s father, Pedro Segura, was the wealthiest man in Teruel at the time, and refused permission for their wedding as Juan had no money to bring to the marriage.

He agreed to give his daughter’s suitor five years to earn enough money and make a name for himself to allow him to marry his beloved. So, Juan left Teruel and went off to war to make his fortune. Nothing was heard of him throughout those five years, but Isabel remained true to her love and refused to give in to her father’s repeated insistence that she should marry. She argued that women should not wed until they knew how to manage a household, and said she had opted to remain a virgin until she reached the age of twenty.

The five years went by and Juan had not returned, so Isabel gave in and agreed to marry the husband chosen for her by her father. The wedding quickly took place and, of course, it was then that Juan returned, just after his love was married to another man. He had miscalculated the five years by one day. According to the legend, Juan then made his way to his beloved’s bedside and pleaded for a kiss, ‘Kiss me or I will die’. Isabel refused to betray her new husband, and Juan fell dead at her feet.

The young woman then began to reflect on how much Juan had loved her, how much he had done for her and how he had died for want of a kiss. She decided that she would grant him his wish before he was buried and went to the Church of San Pedro where his body was lying. Juan’s last kiss proved too to be Isabel’s last, as she also fell down dead after bestowing a kiss on her lost love.

The two were buried together in the same tomb and their remains were discovered more than two centuries later while work was being carried out on the church in the mid-16th century. It was in 1619 that the town secretary found a document which purportedly confirmed that the bodies found in the church were those of the star-crossed lovers.

Today, their tomb can be seen in Teruel in the Mausoleum of the Iglesia de San Pedro, where the figures sculpted by Juan de Ávalos can be seen with their hands not quite touching as they reach out to each other over the tomb.

The remains of the Amantes de Teruel were moved to a new building in September 2005, where the different sections of the Mausoleo de los Amantes tell the story of the Lovers, the Amantes as a source of inspiration in the world of the arts, and love in difficult times – the social, political and cultural background of 13th century Teruel. It’s managed by the Fundación Amantes de Teruel www.amantesdeteruel.es

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