University of Osuna
[1][2] That bull was granted due to the efforts of Don Juan Téllez Girón, Fourth Count of Ureña and First Duke of Osuna,[3][4] who also gave it an endowment sufficient to its needs.
Cervantes, whose grandfather served as corregidor of Osuna, mentions the university three times in his writings, never favorably.
The university did not quite close down at this time, though its operations do seem to have been suspended when the building was used as a French headquarters during the Peninsular War.
[9] Positions were also endowed for 36 sopistas or capigorrones (the names mean, respectively, "eaters of thin soup" and "layabouts"), 12 each in grammar, arts, theology.
These positions—again, as in other Spanish universities of the time—were reserved for poor young men of ability; they received a modest scholarship and their bread and board.
Their cuchara al cinturón ("spoon on the belt") remains a symbol of the tuna (a type of student troubadour) down to this day.
Some of these were natives of Osuna or nearby towns under the seigneury of the same duke, and lived with their families or in rented rooms.
[9] As elsewhere in Spain, students were often disorderly: street riots were not uncommon, especially among those who were living in poverty to the point of hunger.
[1] The buildings erected under the patronage of the First Duke of Osuna are important primarily because of the adoption and diffusion of new stylistic currents and ideas from the Italian architecture of the time.
[1] The surviving university building testifies to the Renaissance aesthetics, providing one of the most singular and defining architectural examples of Osuna's past greatness.
The other two towers, in the rear, are square, in the style of buttresses; they extend to the same height as those in front, and their spires are pyramidal.
That entire assemblage is finished at the outer edge with molding, flanked on both sides by attached columns on a high base, over which is an entablature with pinnacles on either end.
In the interior, most of the original rooms have been adapted and transformed into modern classrooms devoid of any artistic and architectural interest.
[1] One enters through the principal doorway to a rectangular vestibule or hall with a carved ceiling with two orders of beams on corbels, decorated with inlay work.
This space opens on the right to the chapel, straight ahead to the central courtyard, and on the left to the Sala de la Girona.
It is separated from the nave by a bay, which is segmented by a 16th-century wrought-iron grating composed of two horizontal bands that divide the two areas.
At the top of the grating is a crest composed of semicircles made of bent bars, pointed and crowned with heraldic motifs, configured as an entablature.
[1] The Sala de la Girona is roughly rectangular, with a carved ceiling with two orders of beams over corbels.
The lower floor features marble columns of the Tuscan order, supporting paired, symmetrical semicircular bays.
Above the columns are located small pillars that, at their connection to the entablature, form an alfiz, a type of arch characteristic of Morisco architecture.
The upper galleries are composed of columns on high plinths, supporting semicircular bays, paired and covered with iron railings.
[1] In addition to the murals mentioned above and the paintings of the four church fathers and the Four Evangelists, the building also has paintings of the Immaculate Conception, Annunciation, Nativity, and Epiphany and several portraits, including two each of Don Juan Téllez Girón and Doña María de la Cueva.
The old university reopened in 1847 as such an institute, and operated in that capacity until 1993, when it moved to a former old age home restored and adapted by the Council of Education of the Andalusian Autonomous Government.
[2] During restoration, some interesting discoveries were made: the arrangement of openings to the courtyard had apparently been changed at least once in the course of the building's history.
