Royal Conciliar Seminary of Santa Catalina

The Mindonian Seminary is an institution that was born after the dictates of the Council of Trent, possibly thanks to Bishop Fray Pedro Maldonado who participated in it as a theologian before being proposed by King Philip II for the Mindonian See. On this point both the City Council, the Chapter and the Bishop agreed and so the decision was made to start it up in 1565 following the dictates of Trent. Thus, in 1573 the Seminary was up and running. It was at numbers 1 and 2 of the old street "do Colexio", then Padilla Street, Generalísimo Franco Street and today Aflonso VII Street. This first building, with the passage of time it is seen that it does not meet the conditions suitable to the intended purpose neither in its structure nor in the teachings that are taught so it is considered necessary to move the seminary to a new location. The bishop Francisco Losada y Quiroga will be the architect of the new building because, after asking permission to the king for the work and obtaining the authorization, he will face the construction in an orchard called "O Torrillón" of episcopal property behind the Cathedral. The first phase of the current building, the work of the master Ignacio Estévez, was built between 1770 and 1775. It consisted of a single cloister with first floor and second floor. This new construction was intended to be an adequate place for the formation of the seminarians. For this reason, besides pretending that the new Seminary would be modern, it was intended to teach not only grammar but also Philosophy and Theology, two branches of knowledge that were not taught in the previous building due to lack of space. In this attempt to make the Seminary a cultural center, the public library was moved to this new building in 1775, after a request to the King. This library in 1778 already had 245 works. During the following century (XIX) this place suffered multiple vicissitudes from the beginning. Thus in 1809, in the middle of the War of Independence against the French, the Seminary was used by General Francisco Fournier as barracks for his troops during the three months that the French occupied Mondoñedo. A little later, in 1836, during the Carlist Wars, this place will also be reused for military use. It became a defensive fortress and the classrooms had to be moved to the monastery of San Pedro de la Alcántara. After all this, towards the end of the century, there was a change in the trend and an extension of the building was built on a second floor between 1888 and 1889 at the request of Bishop Cos y Macho. The plans were signed by the provincial architect Nemesio Cobreros and the master builder was José Rivas, from Lugo. The twentieth century was the greatest splendor of the Seminary because in the middle of the century it doubled its capacity. Now, first of all, a new pavilion was built for stewardship, kitchen, pantry, reflectorium and, later, between 1947 and 1953, new works were carried out in order to double the capacity of the Seminary, so a new cloister and a large chapel were built. Currently the building has two cloisters and a pavilion with two and three aisles, inside it houses several chapels and a library that holds works of great interest among which stands out some incunabula.