Jardines del Marquesado de la Quinta Roja
Jardines del Marquesado de la Quinta Roja or Jardin Victoria is the name of a park that was first laid out in 1881 in the historic urban area of La Orotava on Tenerife .
History of the park
Diego Ponte del Castillo, 8th Marqués de la Quinta Roja, died on April 5, 1880 on one of his estates near the town of Garachico in the north of the island of Tenerife at the age of 39. His body was transferred to La Orotava on the same day to be buried there in the family vault in the city cemetery with an appropriate ceremony. This appropriate ceremony and the burial in the family grave were refused by the local pastor, so that the body was buried next to the family crypt without any solemnity. The expected refusal to bury him in a Christian way was known to the deceased during his lifetime. The reason for the refusal was that Diego Ponte del Castillo was one of the leading members of the Masonic Lodge of La Orotava. This behavior by the Catholic Church caused the mother of the Marquis, Sebastiana del Castillo y Manrique de Lara, to have a mausoleum built in his memory and as an accusation against the intolerance of the Church in order to have the body of her son, her deceased husband and hers there to have one's own corpse buried as soon as the law permits. Burials outside public cemeteries have been banned in Spain since 1847. The garden of one of the family's townhouses in La Orotava was the ideal place for such a memorial. The house was located on Calle San Agustín, directly on what is now called the “Plaza de la Constitución”. The area behind the building was only partially used as a fruit and vegetable garden. Sebastiana del Castillo commissioned the French architect Adolphe Coquet (1841–1907), who lives in Lyon , with the design and construction of a representative monument.
Coquet was a star architect decorated with many honors and titles who had known the deceased personally. The architect constructed the building in Lyon from white marble extracted there, had the individual parts packed and personally supervised the construction in La Orotava in the spring of 1882 after the substructure had already been built according to his plans. The grotto below the mausoleum is also based on Coquet's designs. There is no evidence that he was involved in the planning of the garden or even in the selection of plants. Three paintings by the local artist Manuel González Méndez were installed in the building, their whereabouts are unknown.
In 1888 the park hosted a highly regarded horticultural exhibition, during which many prominent figures from the Canary Islands visited the park. They all took note of the allegations about the behavior of the Church in the case of the Marquis' funeral, which are recorded on a plaque at the mausoleum. (After 1936, two lines and a half directed against the Catholic Church were chiseled out of the plaque.)
After the initiator of the gardens died in 1904, the residential building was redesigned and used as a hotel from 1907. The hotel was named after the British Queen and her granddaughter, the Spanish Queen Victoria Eugenia . The name of the facility, Jardín Victoria, which is still used today, dates from this period. The mostly very wealthy foreign guests of the hotel stayed in Tenerife primarily for health reasons. The garden took on the role of a spa park. When the guests stayed away due to the civil war, the hotel was closed in 1938 and the park was used as a vegetable garden and potato field. As part of an inheritance division, the eastern part of the house and the adjoining part of the lowest terrace were separated from the rest of the house and park. In 1961, the “Sociedad Cultural Liceo Taoro”, an association for the care of culture and customs, bought the larger western part of the building. The park was still used for agriculture. In 1975 the “Sociedad Cultural Liceo Taoro” moved its headquarters to the building which is adjacent to the park to the east of the Barranco Araujo. In August 1982 the council of the city of La Orotava unanimously decided to buy the building in order to set up a day care center for the elderly. In 1990 the city bought the park area. It took more than eight years to restore the original appearance. On May 16, 1999, the park was opened to the public. In 2003, the government of the Canary Islands announced that the park would be listed as a Bien de Interés Cultural in the Historic Garden category. The question of whether the symbols that some historians claim to have recognized on the mausoleum and in the park itself are typical of the ideas of the Freemasonry movement led to a discussion that is apparently not yet concluded.
The mausoleum
The white marble mausoleum designed by Adolphe Coquet has a square base area of around 3.75 meters on a side. The sloping corners are adorned by two columns each. There are niches on three sides that were intended to accommodate portrait busts. The niche on the south side contains a plaque with an inscription. There is a metal door on the north side. It is decorated with a tree of life and a margrave crown and the letter Omega. The name Diego Ponte del Castillo is placed on the lintel. Above it you can see three wreaths and five amphorae . Above it appears the coat of arms of the 8th Marquis de la Quinta Roja. The pyramid-shaped roof used to end in a lantern with a Celtic cross .
The park
The layout of today's park differs little from the original one. Only at the edges there are changes u. A. by including the Barranco Araujo and by separating part of the lowest level as a private garden from the eastern part of the building. The height difference between the lowest and the highest level of the garden is more than twenty meters. The lowest level is at the height of the rear exit of the residential building. On this level there is a fountain in the middle of which a stylized lotus blossom is depicted. On the way up to the second level one comes across two stone benches arranged in segments, which are given a symbolic meaning. The main axis of the garden is formed by the mausoleum at the highest point and the wide staircase that runs towards the building. To the right and left of these stairs are the only areas in the park that have a slope. The stairs start on the third level. On this level is also the entrance to the garden from the west, which was previously closed by a gate from England. This gate is now set up within the garden. On the east side of this level is the newly created exit which leads over a bridge onto a path to the Plaza de la Constitución.
To the east and west of the staircase axis there are three planted levels each. On the top level, southwest of the mausoleum, there is a tent construction in the square, in which occasional events take place. The basic design of most levels is the same: a path that runs in an east-west direction is separated from the lower level by a double wall that forms a kind of flower box. On a lawn there are a fountain or two and individual trees cut into shape. The individual symmetrically arranged elements are framed by red, gray or green and white ornamental plants. Various, mostly red-flowering plants hang down from the wall of the higher level. Due to the climatic conditions in La Orotava, the various plants bloom all year round. Some of the paths that run in a north-south direction, i.e. uphill or downhill, are paved with pebbles, some of which form patterns to which symbolic meaning is assigned. These paths are limited on one side by a kind of flower box. On the other side there is a wide wall on which there are flower pots painted white.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Boletín Oficial de Canarias núm. 66, four 4 de april de 2003
- ↑ Melchor Padilla: El mausoleo masónico de La Orotava ( Memento of the original from August 14, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
literature
- Nicolás González Lemus and José M. Rodríguez Maza: Masoneria e intoleranzia en Canarias , Edition Benchomo, Santa Cruz de Tenerife - Las Palmas de Gran Canaria 2004, ISBN 84-95657-72-4
- Boletín Oficial de Canarias (Law and Bulletin of the Government of the Autonomous Region of the Canary Islands) núm. 66, viernes 4 de april de 2003 http://www.gobiernodecanarias.org/boc/2003/066/030.html
- A. Sebastián Hernández Gutieres et al .: Guía del Patrimonio Vegetal del Centro Urbano de La Orotava , Excmo. Ayuntamiento de la Villa de La Orotava, La Orotava 2008, ISBN 978-84-935353-3-9