But a series of apparitions and strange phenomena also take place within it. According to witnesses, these are manifestations of ghosts, with a lady in white walking through the gardens, sobbing and crying. It is not just any ghost, it is an illustrious aristocrat, or perhaps they are illustrious because there are two apparitions that could correspond to the Infanta Luisa Fernanda de Borbón herself, Consort of Spain between 1679 and 1689 when she married Carlos II and also of the ghost of Queen Maria Mercedes, so linked to Seville and married to the monarch Alfonso XII – Maria de las Mercedes is that Sevillian ghost that everyone longs for in the history of the city, had a great love for plants and gardens, relating this apparition with his unfortunate person.

If you visit the Park do not forget to pay tribute to Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer in his gazebo, you will be moved. Curiously, the María Luis Park is very close to the San Telmo Palace, today the Presidency of the Junta de Andalucía, where there are also manifestations from the beyond, such as in the beautiful Plaza de España with the evocation of its towers, its Renaissance vestiges, the fineness of its ceramics, the wrought iron of its windows, the wooden coffering of its ceilings; Everything has a place in this incredible space where there are doors that open and close or where the soldiers of the Captaincy have seen the ghost of an old inhabitant wandering around who still seems to be waiting for the return of a golden age that left to never return.

Spectral experiences where reason is lost If you wish to know these and more legends you can visit www.discoveringandalucia.com

It is a beautiful location in the province of Huelva, to the north, in the middle of the mountains, among rural aromas and eternal memories. Alájar is a town that has an impressive place: the Peña de Arias Montano. There is the sanctuary to the Virgin, the Queen of the Angels and also a site where the hermits looked for retreat, peace and find their perpetual wonderings. There, in the 5th century, St. Victor was praying, meditating, looking for the peace that among the rest of the mortals he did not find; or the most emblematic in the area -that even gives a nickname to the Rock- as it was Benito Arias Montano, the enigmatic librarian of the king.

The town of Alájar arises as a religious restlessness, normally the towns and villages grew because of a military or defensive motivation, but religious were the less and stranger ones. Thus in the Brotherhood Queen of the Angels of Allah we can read: “From the beginning, Man wanted to dedicate to God, through the devotion to Our Lady of the Angels, impressed by so much beauty and so wide horizons.

In a writing of 1844, by J.M.Pablos Moreno, we are told that the said place was called Desierto de la Peña and that at all times the image of the Virgin has been the refuge of this town and of all the bordering towns in their tribulations and needs. People have come from far away to this holy place to pray for the remedy in which the piety of the faithful has manifested the wonders which the Lady has worked with them.

In 1528 in the “book of Stories and Institutions of the Confraternity of Our Lady of the Angels” we read of a curious intercession in the face of epidemics and droughts, as told by Friar Antonio de Lorca: “The image of the Virgin is frequently visited with particular joy by the people of these vicinity and even far away who come on pilgrimage to fulfill their vows and to gain other favors…”. There, in the hermitage, we are overwhelmed by the ex-votos of so many faithful who have seen their request granted, sometimes miraculously.

The peña is also known as “Peña de Benito Arias Montano”, it was not just any character, it was the librarian of Felipe II, alchemist and hermit who asked for permission to return to Allah, although the king refused, perhaps because of the royal fear (in the monarchical sense and of truthfulness) that he might perfect his already advanced esoteric practices.

Arias Montano had a small room next to the hermitage where it was said that he kept important esoteric documents as well as other more personal ones. 

The legend of the image of the Virgin also weighs on the fact that it was not a French image from the 12th or 13th century but the work of the same angels who gave it to a little shepherd boy.

It is believed, mistakenly or not, that when Arias Montano retired to the Peña the king himself came to visit him and that the librarian left a message hidden among the backs of the books in the library of El Escorial with an important esoteric discovery, reality or fiction?

Under Alájar there is also a group of caves among which the so-called Dark Palace stands out, which is closed to the curious and has the particularity that if we go into it with a compass we will be disoriented since it will not find the north… more info in www.discoveringandalucia.com

“Esto sólo puede ser ocasionado por fantasmas” matizaba el capataz de la obra mientras narraba como las herramientas se movían solas, o que unas manos del más allá parecían moverlas incluso cuando se metían bajo llave y se colgaban del gancho de una grúa a muchos metros de alturas… Parecía obra de un mago más que de seres del más allá.

Contar historias de fantasmas siempre es -a los ojos del aficionado de estos temas- un hecho insólito y muchas veces, demasiadas, no deja de ser un acontecimiento casi increíble…, siempre y cuando no le suceda a uno mismo…

Los vecinos de la zona no eran ajenos a todo ello, unos trataban de expresar su testimonio de lo imposible como mejor podían, otros negaban los hechos…, pero en todos existía un sentimiento de inquietud cuando volvían sus ojos hacía aquel solar maldito.

Sin embargo el colegio-hospicio llevaba décadas que ya no desempeñaba aquella labor. Incluso un vigilante de seguridad descarga su arma contra la visión de una monja espectral.

Los investigadores de lo paranormal que hasta allí se acercaron –desde allí el programa “Milenio3”, de Iker Jiménez, realizó un espacio radiofónico especial- grabaron psicofonías y recabaron los testimonios de asustados vecinos que habían tenido terribles experiencias con seres que, a falta de una mejor explicación, describían como “fantasmales”.

En muchas ocasiones es el pasado el que nos da las claves del presente: en el solar, en el proceso de excavación de cimientos, se hallaron los cuerpos contenidos en ánforas de antiguos moradores de la zona, en una especie de necrópolis que ocupó aquel mismo lugar, y una tablilla de advertencia, premonitoria casi, en cuya leyenda en latín podía leerse: “no turbar la paz de éste lugar”…