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The Basilica of Santa María is a religious building in the municipality of Vilafranca del Penedès (Alt Penedès). It is located in the Plaza de Jaime I, in the center of the medieval center of the town.
The basilica is the first parish building in Catalonia built in the Gothic style and follows the construction guidelines of the Catalan single-nave churches. It is a Gothic temple built on top of an old Romanesque chapel.
The main façade began in the 15th century following Gothic guidelines, but it has undergone several interventions throughout history, the most recent at the beginning of the 20th century.
Pope Benedict XV elevated it to the category of Basilica in 1920. In 1935 the Generalitat declared it a Historical-Artistic Monument. Later, it was declared a Cultural Asset of National Interest.
Its main façade is in the neo-Gothic style, built in 1903, adding two towers and enlarging the rose window above the portico. The doorway of Santa María, on the side façade, was the original door of the basilica, called the priests’ door. It still preserves remains of 14th century mural paintings located in the voussoirs of the semicircular arch. It is of late Romanesque tradition and dates from the end of the 13th century.
Some singularities of the building stand out, such as the great variety of gargoyles, located in the middle of the buttresses and which take the shapes of fantastic or real animals.
Also noteworthy are the numerous sculptures located on the outside, just below the roof line, in the form of human heads, male and female, which could represent the protectors of the new church.
The first reliable news that we find about the temple of Santa Maria de Vilafranca dates back to the year 1187, when it is mentioned in the will of Pere de Vilafranca. Some scholars believe that the church of Santa Maria outside of Muralla, which is mentioned in the act of consecration of Sant Miquel de Olèrdola from the year 992, could be this temple.
In 1188, King Alfonso I donated to the church of Vilafranca the right to the notaries of the town and its entire area. This and the fact that Vilafranca became a royal accommodation, when the monarchs were passing through Penedès, caused the power of the town and its church to increase considerably.
This led to the construction of a new temple, more appropriate to the new status of Vilafranca. The first stone was laid in May 1285. Construction work continued until 1484, when it was consecrated.
Vilafranca experienced great economic, social development and ecclesiastical power during the 13th century, a time when the new construction of the church of Santa Maria was decided, on the remains of a previous one from the 12th century, specifically documented in 1188. The guilds and brotherhoods were the ones that contributed the most to its realization.
The current building is from the 15th century (consecration in 1489) and the crypt from the 16th century (1561). Between the 13th and 19th centuries, important works took place, such as the renovation of the vault, which collapsed in 1735, the reform of the bell tower (1775, 1860, 1919) and the construction of the Chapel of the Santísimo, in 1809. At the beginning of the 20th century, The main Renaissance façade was replaced by the neo-Gothic one.
The renovation was carried out between 1903 and 1905 according to a project by August Font and under the direction of Santiago Güell, to finish the façade in its original Gothic style, a work that was completed in August 1905, giving it the appearance that can be seen today, with the two bell towers.
In 1934 it caught fire and, immediately, reconstruction began under the direction of Jeroni Martorell.
It is a church with a single nave covered by a vault with five cross sections and five side chapels per side between wide buttresses. The apse is polygonal and has seven keyholes with interior buttresses and an octagonal bell tower behind. The crypt is covered with a ribbed vault, whose ribs are supported by two vault keys.
Access to the temple is through two doors. The old main entrance, located on Santa Maria Street, has a round arch and preserves remains of painting that represent the Crucifixion. The second door corresponds to the current façade, in neo-Gothic style, which opens onto the Plaza de Jaume I. It has a large door with a pointed arch and in the tympanum there is a sculptural group that represents the Coronation of the Virgin.
Above the rose window the crowning is double-sided with blind arches and small side towers.
On the main altar there is a polychrome ivory crucifix from the 18th century. It presents the body of Christ arched to the left, perhaps due to the shape of the ivory piece, and rounded, with the legs together and the feet crossed.
The head, with long hair, is tilted to the left and back and is well below the raised arms. Effeminate style. The cross is modern, made of silver.
There is also an enamel of the Holy Communion from the 20th century. It is an enamel on polychrome metal, with the religious scene that represents the Holy Supper. All the figures completely occupy the space and are arranged symmetrically around a central figure, Christ.
All the figures wear tunics and are standing except for the two closest to the central one, who are kneeling in front of the table, on which the bread and wine are arranged. It is a schematized realistic figurativism.
Under the presbytery, a crypt was built in 1561 to house the Blessed Sacrament, but since 1700 it has housed the relics of Sant Fèlix, patron saint of the city. In the crypt there is a sculptural group of the burial of Christ, made in 1916 by the sculptor Josep Llimona and paid for by Bishop Torras i Bages. It is a sculptural group of white Carrara marble, formed by the dead Christ, lying on a bed and covered by Saint Joseph of Arimathea with a sheet, with Nicodem behind. At the foot is Mary Magdalene, at the head the Virgin Mary with Saint John and in the foreground Maria Salomé. It is a stylized realistic figurative work, typical of modernist aesthetics.
In the crypt there are vault keys from the 16th century and two vault keys with a round outline. One presents the theme of the Resurrection, with Christ triumphant, on the tomb, with a cross in one hand and in another height, a cloth that partially covers his body, fastened with a buckle and a cruciform border on the head. Two soldiers, dressed in armor, one on each side, are in the attitude of falling back. The other presents the theme of the Pietà, where the Virgin, with a tunic and excessively long legs, carries Christ on her lap and has one leg over the other and her arm fallen towards her back.
There is also the Altar of San Félix, from the 20th century. It is a white marble altar formed by the figure of Saint Felix dressed as a priest, with his hands folded on his chest, arranged on a pedestal with reliefs in the shape of a palm of martyrdom, an ax and a crown of roses and decorated with garlands of roses and bay leaves.
At the foot are the figures of two angels dressed in robes who lean on the pedestal in an attitude of crying with their wings spread around them.
At the door of Santa Maria there are paintings from the 14th century. They are remains of polychrome paintings arranged in the center of the exterior archivolt and the upper side wall of the Santa Maria door. The Crucifixion is represented, with the figure of the Virgin and the sun on the right and Saint John and the moon on the left and characters with a border under arches. Stylized and sinuous figures typical of the Gothic. They were found in 1973 and are in serious danger of irreversible degradation.
There is also a polychrome wooden statue of Saint Lucia. It shows a young, upright female figure, dressed in a tunic and cloak, with the head and body slightly arched to opposite sides and with one leg supporting the weight and the other slightly advanced and supported. She wears a border and braids and in one hand the palm of martyrdom and in the other a plate with her eyes.
The altarpiece of San Ramón de Peñafort was made by Rafael Solanic i Balius in the 20th century. It is made up of a central free-standing sculpture of San Ramón de Peñafort surrounded by embossed bronze panels with scenes from the Saint’s life and framed by uprights and lintels of wood and unmoulded marble.
The statue is made of polychrome wood and represents the Saint dressed as a friar with his hands on his chest carrying a book. A key hangs from his belt and at his feet he has a tiara. In the embossing there is a main appreciation of volume and space through the introduction of architectural elements.
The bell tower is a construction almost 52 m high, octagonal in shape, with two sections, located independently on the outside of the church in a freestanding manner, in the middle of the old town of the city of Vilafranca, to the southeast side of the apse of the church. parish church of Santa María.
It is conceived as a free-standing element, although a chapel built later links the ground floor with the eastern part of the temple’s head. It belongs to the typology of Gothic bell towers with an octagonal plan with two prismatic bodies, the upper one smaller, like a lantern, sensibly differentiated by a terrace, where the plastic beauty of the slenderness of proportions and the heavy and rotundity of the elements harmoniously contrast. walls, which are only lightened at the last level of each body.
The structure is made of stone set with mortar, with the exterior and interior facings of well-squared limestone ashlars.
On the outside, five molded cornices or imposts horizontally divide the lower body, 34 m high and 3.70 m on a side, into five almost equal parts, and a smaller sixth that corresponds to the railing of the upper terrace.
In general. The whole is solid, except for the small pointed arch openings and Gothic traces that appear on each side. The fifth level, however, contains seven large windows that form an almond arch with molded archivolts. In that space are the four religious bells.
The upper volume is 9 m high and 2.4 m on each side. It is divided into two parts: a blind plinth and a body pierced by eight pointed arch-shaped windows decorated with Gothic tracery and mullion, which contains the hourly bells.
The complex is crowned by a spire or spire with a wooden structure, like a pavilion roof, covered with scale-shaped majolica ceramics. enamelled in different colors: white, yellow. green and blue, which unlock differently on each face forming a game of rhombuses.
The pieces are fixed with brass screws on the wooden structure and form a kind of heel to be nested together. The edges of the chapillo are made of green glazed ceramic pieces. Above, a jug in the shape of an open flower, also made of green glazed ceramic, serves as the base of the copper angel-weather vane, which reaches a total height of 5.1.75 m.
The interior of the tower is divided into five levels that give rise to very interesting architectural environments. The first four spaces are covered with octagonal vaults whose nerves are closed by well-crafted return keys decorated with simple floral motifs. The last level is covered by the spire.
Access to the tower is through the second level from two spiral staircases, made of stone and with iron sheet footbridges placed between 1986 and 1989: one is the one that connects with the street and is integrated into the body attached to the Headboard; the other comes from the back of the church altar and is made in the thickness of the bell tower wall.
Upon reaching the second floor, another staircase with a metal structure made in 1987 unfolds helically attached to the walls and around the counterweights of the clock, it reconnects with the spiral staircase, also made of stone and made to the thickness of the wall, which leads to the third level, former cell of the bell tower in the fourth, and ends on the terrace of the fifth level.
From the terrace. which is accessed through a cylindrical gap of metal grille where there is a door, four steps common with the space of the hourly bells. where there is also a gate, from where you can see the magnificent wooden structure of the spire.
The floors of each floor are made new and reproduce the octagonal drawing of the vault and the ribs and keystones. based on portions of concrete outlined by a perimeter strip and radial strips of pink-colored Sénia stone.
Special mention of the bell tower is worth delving into the Angel-Veleta, which is located above the vertex of the pyramidal spire of the bell tower is the vane assembly, whose main element is the copper figure of an angel who, with his left hand , supports a spear with a ball and a two-pronged pennant dated on one side to the year 1775 and, on the other, to the year 1880.
The vane assembly is made up of the ceramic and copper base, the copper angel and the lightning rod, the three parts articulated by the central axis. The axis is an iron mast, anchored in the breast of the monk of the needle and locked by the right feet of the wooden structure with shims and metal flanges.
The ceramic and copper base is formed by a green glazed cap, which overlaps the last majolica and covers the aforementioned flanges; On it, there is a zinc bib, a ceramic collar and a jug of the same material in the manner of the pine cones that usually top the roofs of the spiers, composed of a flowered base, an elongated neck and a collar. On it there is a copper pot with a lid of the same material, inside which, filled with sand, some documents were found inside some zinc cartridges.
Above, the lightning rod cable is connected to the piece of mast that is visible until it reaches the angel’s skirt. The lower part of the piece is also attached to the skirt with brass screws, a connection hidden by a copper belt decorated with a buckle.
The wings are two independent pieces that cross the body to the front, using bolts, where they are fixed with metal pegs. The wings are reinforced by copper ribs locked together by a rod of the same metal that helps resist the forces of the wind; Between the neck and the shoulders there is a collar-shaped clamp from which an iron handrail emerges that supports the upper part of the banner. The base of the banner rests on the skirt.
The placement on site was in a sectoral manner, vertically sewing the pieces of the skirt and the body and fixing them to the two interior iron crosses. one at the height of the chest and another at the height of the knees, which support the weight and have rotating bearings, surely to facilitate gales, on the chest there is a small window closed by a plate, with enough width to pass through she a hand.
The angel shows signs of old repairs carried out with tin, probably in 1880, as indicated by the date of the pennant on one of its faces and as testified by the written documents found inside the weathervane, which speak of an important repair to the spire. In addition, it has many dents that could well have been caused by projectile impacts.
On the other hand, the sheet has a greenish hue produced by the general oxidation of copper exposed to the elements. Specifically and coinciding with the points of contact with the iron elements, the sheet had practically lost its thickness due to corrosion due to electrolysis due to the potential difference between both materials.
On the other hand. Rusting of the mast and bearings of the angel’s support structure had blocked the vane’s rotary movement. All this, together with the poor condition of the ceramic base, made it advisable to dismantle the vane assembly to repair it in the workshop and replace the damaged parts, an operation that made it necessary to cut the lightning rod mast. When the angel got off, its apparent poor condition could be seen up close.
Consequently, it was decided to make a complete reproduction of the base and the weathervane and restore the old one to install it in the same bell tower and so that it could be seen up close by visitors.
The reproduction The new figure was made by the locksmith Joan Capellas, from Sant Feliu Sasserra, between March and July 1988, and was placed on the bell tower on July 31. The current angel, measuring 1.80 m and weighing 150 kg, made of 2 mm copper sheet and 30 x 10 mm trimmings of the same material, was made in the image of the old one with the same materials.
The sharp bell tower of the Basilica of Saint Mary has seven bells distributed on two levels: in the main bell room there are four new bells intended for liturgical use. In the upper chamber are the three clock bells.
The hourly bells are old and of different origins and chronologies, the list includes the name of the bell, the founder, year, mouth centimeters, kilos:
The Santa María organ is one of the most notable instruments of the organic heritage of Catalonia for its romantic-symphonic style, for its pneumatic transmission and for the beauty and personality of its sound.
On August 23, 1942, the organ of the Basilica of Saint Mary was inaugurated with a concert. The program included the pieces composed and performed by the organist José Maideu. It was built by the accredited Barcelona organ builder, Cayetano Estadella. The large façade measures 6.50 meters wide by 13 meters high, and was designed and directed by the Vilafranqués architect José Brugal.
The organ consists of 2 manual keyboards of 61 notes each, from C low to C high, and one with pedals of 32 notes, from C to G. It contains 24 effective games and 4 per transmission, with 2,257 tubes; 64 preparation buttons for free combinations, plus 4 automatic buttons; 4 coupling and tremolo registers; 13 combination pedals and 6 other combinations for all registers, giving the effect of a great 6-keyboard organ.
The adapted mechanism system is the mechano-pneumatic-tubular (own Estadella company) for manual and pedal keyboards; pneumatic for the operation of the records, and direct tubular-pneumatic for the large 16 and 8 foot basses. The keyboards are installed on a console separate from the organ, which allows playing more comfortably and being able to direct the singers.
The organ is equipped with the corresponding air tanks and regulating bellows, at two pressures, one for the operation of all the pneumatic-tubular mechanisms and the other for the sounds, all of them being fed by two large fans coupled to a powerful electro- engine.
The organ was restored in 2006 by Späth Orgelbau. In 2018, the Association of Friends of Vilafranca Organs was created.
The interior bars of the side chapels have doors formed by bars that join together at the top, creating simple, double or triple, ogee or lowered arches, sometimes superimposed and some multi-lobed.
The bars end up forming pointed arches between the bars and a cornice of Gothic foliage of stylized acanthus leaves, rosettes and schematized clovers above which rises a crown of spikes that alternate the following themes: agave with spikes and flowers, pomegranate of spikes and flowers and spiral of spikes.
The pantheon in which the deceased of the House of Álvarez-Cuevas, a noble family from Vilafranca, rested was located in the chapel of San José.
