Did you know that La Iglesia Mayor is having its 500th birthday – that’s a lot of candles! This church-cum-fortress has withstood pirate raids and earthquakes – even a sacking during the Spanish Civil War, so it could do with a spot of restoration work.
It’s amazing really, because there are not that many buildings of this kind still surviving nowadays. When you think about it, it was built just eight years after the discovery of America. The church, for instance, had already been in existence for 273 years when the USA was officially recognised as an independent nation.
Anyway, time has left its marks on the building: sizeable cracks are visible, there is drainage problems and damp is rife. The part that is in most need of repair is the bell tower.
On the 8th of November 1510 work began on the La Iglesia, Nuestra Señora de la Encarnación, as the Catholic Monarchs, who had completed the Reconquista of Spain from the Moors 18 years before, decided that the town needed a sod-off church to let everybody know which religion was calling the shots. The promontory had several Moorish houses occupying it at the time, which quickly disappeared to make way for the project. Part of the original Moorish mosque that stood there was incorporated into the building.
And there it has stood, serving as a fortress where the folk of Motril could defend themselves from Barbary pirates. Although the earthquake of 1804 toppled the original belltower, it was the Spanish Civil War that caused the most damage: Republican forces had turned it into a military garrison between February ‘36 to January ‘38, which is when munitions, stored below the Chapel del la Virgen de los Dolores went off accidentally wreaking terrible damage – the church had already been stripped of its religious art. But the solid walls of the church-fortress resisted and it was possible to rebuild.
Finally, just in case anybody is confused over which church we are talking about, La Iglesia Mayor is the one at the top of town, not the one next to La Esplanada. The church on the hill there – probably the most emblematic of Motril – is known as El Cerro – Iglesia de la Virgen de la Cabeza.