History
The Order of Saint Francis , founded by Saint Francis of Assisi , was installed in Seville as early as the 13th century. Its main convent was the Casa Grande de San Francisco . In the 1580s, a new Franciscan branch settled in the city: the Alcantarinos , who settled in the convent of San Diego de Alcalá .
The convent of San Diego was built to the south of the city, next to the Guadalquivir . In 1784 there was a flood and they left the convent to reside in the extinct Jesuit novitiate of San Luis (the Jesuits had been expelled by Carlos III in 1765). With Ferdinand VII , the Jesuits were allowed to return and they claimed all their property, so in 1816 the Franciscans left San Luis and moved to a private house on Calle Imperial
They tried to return to its original headquarters, but this had been awarded in 1784 to the English industrialist Nathan Wetherell , who had converted it into a tannery. This caused a dispute between Wetherell and the Diegans.
Finally, Wetherell acquired some houses in the center that had belonged to the San Antonio Abad hospital and a plot of land near its church and put those properties in the name of the City Council in exchange for the friars being the usufructuaries. These remained there until the exclaustration of Mendizábal in 1835.
In 1842 the Wetherell family sold the tanning factory building to Clara Osorno, the widow of José de Checa. In 1849 Antonio de Orleans , Duke of Montpensier , moved with his wife, María Luisa de Borbón , to live in the nearby San Telmo Palace . The Duke acquired the orchards and the old factory to expand his gardens. The building was readapted by the architect Juan Talavera y Heredia to be used as a warehouse, stables and service units. The church of the old convent was used as a chapel for the palace employees.
In 1892, the infanta María Luisa, already a widow, ceded the land of the garden to serve as a municipal public park. Immediately afterwards, the city council will undertake a series of works to condition the place, among which will be the creation of María Luisa avenue and the demolition of the tanning factory in 1893.
In its place the Casino de la Exposición and the Lope de Vega theater were built . The theater and the casino were joint buildings that would serve as Seville's pavilion at the Ibero-American Exposition of 1929.
Description
That area was the main entrance to the exhibition grounds. Aníbal González , who was the chief architect of the exhibition, had been proposing various options for that environment since 1911.
In 1925 he presented to the Exhibition Committee the project for a great Neo-Plateresque arch. However, Aníbal González resigned and Vicente Traver took charge of the works in 1927, proposing a large semi-elliptical iron fence and, in the center, a structure with three arches.
In the central opening there is a symbolic image of Hispania dressed in a tunic and a mantle. Hispania carries a coat of arms of Spain with the NO8DO. Next to her is a lion with a globe of the world. This sculpture is the work of Manuel Delgado Brackenbury .
In the right opening there is a sculpture entitled The Spiritual Wealth of Seville, which is a woman in a tunic holding an image of the Immaculate Conception. In the left opening there is another one titled The Material Wealth of Seville , where there is a similarly dressed woman who has garden produce in a cornucopia. Both sculptures are by Enrique Pérez Comendador .
The arches are supported by red marble columns. The monument has a plinth with a fountain. The entire structure was designed by Vicente Traver in 1927.
Close to this roundabout is the monument to La Raza , the work of Santiago Martínez in 1929.
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