Vera – Victoria Convent

Vera – Victoria Convent

The Victoria Convent, also called Padres Mínimos Convent and San Francisco de Paula is located in C/ Villar with C/ Victoria (streets), few minutes from Plaza Mayor (square), in the andalusian town of Vera, Almeria province.

The 1st of October of 1606 the Convent of San Francisco of Granada granted to the City of Vera patronage of this Convent. The Vera City Council was committed to undertake the necessary works in the Church and the dwelling quarters for the friars, as well as the maintain with pecuniary contributions and alms of bread, oil and fish, twelve friars.

The church was extended at the end of the XVIII century. Th architect from Lorca Jeronimo Martinez de lara made a report in 1776 in which he proposed the demolition of the facade and to build on its side a greater chapel covered by a cupola. This work concluded in 1790, towards the end of it supervised by the architect from Vera Francisco Ruiz Garrido.

At the beginning of the XVII century Vera had approximately 1800 inhabitants and in their parochial church only two clergymen exerted the Offices. These were insufficient to cover all the spiritual necessities that the population required: masses, confessions, preaching….

In order to remedy it, the City Council called on the Convent that the Order of San Francisco de Paula had in Granada, trying to establish a convent of the so called.

Probably the Minimos Order was chosen because of the entailment that historically had existed between the community founded by San Francisco de Paula on the XV century and the confrontation between Christianity and Islam…

The Virgin of the Victory (advocation that became the Saint Patroness of Malaga after the conquest of the city by the Castilians) was invoked by these frears for protection against the frequent danger of attacks on the levante coast from the berbers.

Throughout its existence the convent accumulated a remarkable patrimony that underwent the attacks of  the confiscation during the Liberal Triennium (1820-1823). The Liberal Parliament (Cortes) legislated the dissolution of the Convent and therefore the disappearance of The San Franciscan Minimos Order of Vera.

The Convent was demolished in the middle of the XIX century and its church towards the last years of the XX century was in a deplorable state of conservation. In 1995 it became municipal property, and it has been restored by the City Council during the last years, its renovation completed in 2002.

Vera Town Hall