A property developer who spends a million dollar on a property then
foregoes all the profits on the sale might not be a nominee for entrepreneur of the year.
Yet there is such a person. Maria del Carmen Ladron de Gueverra, known for everybody as
just Mary Carmen, has bought and is renovating a monastery in the hills north of Seville.
The monastery, La Cartuja, five kilometres from the village Cazalla
de la Sierra (belonging to the Carthusians, who were late-starters as Roman Catholic
orders go, founded in France in the 11th century) is one of only four monasteries in that
region, the "Cinderella" of the quartet, has a history no less colourful than
the others. It opened in the 15th century, situated on the "Silver Road" that
was opened up by the Phoenicians long before Christ and connected the south of Spain and
Galicia with numberless gold and silver mines along the way.
The presence of a thousand-year-old spring created the only forest around
the area, a lush, dark-green of willows, dense and royal chestnuts, poplars and other
types that contrasts with the common, local types, "encinas" and
alcoinoques"on the hills that ring the valley.
The spring, Mary Carmen says, only discharges four litres per second
because of the drought, normally it would give six, and flows into a cistern. It feeds
from there a pool, good for swimming, a mill that is being restored then flows into a
small lake and from there into irrigation ditches in the vegetable garden and a field of
lucerne that is cut for sheep, cattle and horses.
The combination of history, spirituality and nature at La Caruja suggest
the kind of people Mary Carmen wishes to be involved in her project. People, who like to
think, meditate and savour the atmosphere imagining the past, who prefer music to tennis,
poetry to bull-fighting, hiking and riding to television and cocktails.
When the church and the monastery will be given dignity as a historical
site, it will be the venue for concerts, choral recitals, theatre and other cultural
events befitting the place.
"What."asks Mary Carmen, "could be simpler?"
