Plaza de San Diego and the former Recollect convent

By Plaza de San Diego, the facade of the former religious house of the Franciscan Recollects survives. They were brothers of an especially strict rule, for whom seclusion, prayer, and poverty were important. Many poor families lived in this part of the city, and they had no parish church of their own. The convent rooms were later occupied by a naval school, a prison, and a psychiatric hospital. Now, behind the university entrance, there are classrooms for music, theater, painting, and design.

The Portuguese merchant Jorge Fernández Gramajo paid for the convent by this square, hoping to secure prayers for himself after death. He had made the fortune that allowed him to bargain for eternity by selling enslaved Africans.

Gramajo arrived in Cartagena in fifteen eighty-seven. He received slave ships and transported people through the port: of the one hundred fifty Africans on his galley San Juan Bautista, forty-one died while still en route. By the beginning of the seventeenth century, the merchant had become one of the city's wealthiest men, but his position remained insecure. Spanish officials suspected Portuguese traders of smuggling, while inquisitors watched the families of baptized Jews, to which Gramajo belonged. Between sixteen ten and sixteen eleven, he was kept under house arrest and tried for illegal trade. He was released, but received the official right to live and conduct business in Spanish possessions only in sixteen fourteen.

Meanwhile, on the outskirts of Los Jagüeyes, the Franciscan Recollects were looking for a place for a new religious house. The Recollects were brothers who followed an especially strict rule, prayerful seclusion, and poverty. Many poor townspeople lived in this part of Cartagena, and they had no parish church of their own. In February sixteen oh eight, the monks received permission to build. Gramajo gave them the land, paid for stone, brick, timber, and roof tiles, and personally oversaw the work. Historians believe that this generosity helped the Portuguese merchant strengthen his position with people who could reopen his case.

The religious house was dedicated to San Diego de Alcalá, a fifteenth-century Spanish Franciscan lay brother who cared for the sick and distributed food to the poor. He was canonized in fifteen eighty-eight. From the convent, the name San Diego passed to the square and then to the whole neighborhood.

The church was consecrated in sixteen twenty-five. Gramajo invested about thirty thousand pesos in its construction and received a place at the step of the high altar. Under his will, the monks were to celebrate a sung Mass there every Saturday for the benefactor's soul. When the merchant died on June twenty-third, sixteen twenty-six, he was buried beneath a slab of Italian marble weighing about three tons. The Italian epitaph asks for mercy for all his sins. The slave trade is not named directly in the inscription: modern scholars draw the connection between this repentance and the business from which Gramajo made his money.

After the monks left, the building housed a naval school, a prison, and a psychiatric hospital. The grave slab was removed from the altar; in time, it ended up in the courtyard of Cartagena's Palace of the Inquisition and almost sank into the ground. Sacra Náder, rector of Escuela de Bellas Artes, who researched the history of its new premises, found the slab with colleagues and hired a crane. On April twenty-second, two thousand seventeen, the marble slab was returned to the former convent.

Since nineteen seventy-six, music, theater, painting, and design have been taught here. Gramajo's slab is now displayed by the university entrance, rather than at the altar where he had ordered a Mass to be sung for himself every Saturday.