Parish of Padre Jesús

At first it was a small hermitage that, with the passage of time, was acquiring special importance, since the merchants began to settle in the Mercadillo neighborhood (outside the urban area), where they did not pay the very high taxes that are they demanded at the gates of entry to the City. In 1547, then, it was already a parish dedicated to Santa Cecilia. In the 18th century, with the construction of the New Bridge, there was a significant exodus of population to the upper part of the Mercadillo, which produced a certain abandonment of the parish and the transfer of its owner later to the then extinct Monastery of the Barefoot Trinitarians. and dedicating it to Our Father Jesus. The construction of the church should have been completed in the middle of fifteen hundred, leaving from this first phase the façade-tower made of ashlars and its Gothic façade with a stepped pointed arch. The church is almost square in plan, not very spacious, but well laid out, whose three naves are separated by two brick columns, and two columns attached to each side, with capitals with embossed flower borders. These columns support the six arches that form the nave in the center, with a beautiful Gothic coffered ceiling. The central nave was covered with Mudejar armor with bow decoration, of which a remainder remains in the choir, this is located at the foot, on a flat wooden framework, and is covered with a barrel vault, like the presbytery . At the foot of the Gospel nave, there is a dressing room that preserves a very rich Baroque decoration. In 1769 the building underwent a great interior reform, in which the Malaga bishop José de Franquis Lasso de Castilla participated, and that is why his arms appear in the triumphal arch of the main nave. During the civil war it suffered important damages, destroying all the artistic, sculptural and pictorial heritage, which was preserved in the church. In it the images of Our Father Jesús Nazareno and the Virgen de los Dolores are venerated, of great devotion among the people of Ronda and of splendid brotherhood fervor. Here notable people from Ronda were baptized as Vicente Espinel, Ríos Rosas and Cayetano Ordóñez “El Niño de la Palma”.