The ruinous Hermitage of the Christ of the Blood of Medina Sidonia and its spooky legend

@ElentirENG ES 5·09·2022 · 23:27 0

Spain is a country with a vast architectural heritage, but sadly, a large part of it has ended up abandoned and in ruins.

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That is the case of the site that concerns us today, an old church built in the fifteenth century, the Ermita del Cristo de la Sangre de Medina Sidonia (Hermitage of the Christ of the Blood), in the province of Cádiz, and today in ruins. Aventuras Entresierras, a YouTube channel dedicated to urban exploration that I never tire of recommending, has published today an interesting video touring the interior of those ruins:

That church has a curious story that Rafael Gil Cano recounted on his blog "Paisajes con Leyenda" in May 2013. Apparently, and as happened with so many other properties of the Catholic Church in Spain, it suffered the so-called "desamortizaciones" (confiscations) of the XIX century, because of which many old churches and monasteries were abandoned and in ruins. Gil Cano points out that this hermitage became private property in the 1830s, so it must have been affected by the so-called confiscation of Mendizábal, between 1836 and 1837. Already in the 20th century, the hermitage was abandoned.

Gil Cano recounts that the last inhabitant of that hermitage was a writer from Jerez who lived there isolated, with the only company of a woman, supposedly his maid, called Marujita, which is why the locals began to refer to the old hermitage by the name of "Castillo de Marujita" (Castle of Marujita).

The aforementioned author also comments that next to the hermitage there is a well, now closed, from which voices came out on nights when the east wind blows. Gil Cano points out that, according to an old man who frequented the place, "he himself could hear more than once the crying of a small child, and a thread of a child's voice that repeated the same anguished word over and over again: “Help! ! Help! Help…!”" Gil Cano says that the old man related this chilling event to the fact that Marujita was “something more than a servant” for that writer, and that the well perhaps became the tomb of the children who would have born of their relationship.