There are buildings that seem to have been built not to last, but to stay, like those lingering guests at the dinner table who no longer know whether to offer another drink or tell another story. The historic building of the University of Oviedo is one of them: it has withstood fires, wars, renovations, and changing fashions, and there it remains, in the heart of the city , impassive and somewhat haughty, as befits a place that was a center of learning when most of Spain still believed that studying was for monks or madmen.
The University was founded in 1608, by the testamentary will of Don Fernando Valdés Salas , a native of Salas and none other than the Inquisitor General of Castile, Archbishop of Seville, and President of the Council of Castile. A true self-made man… well, the rest is another story. Valdés, who understood the power of knowledge (albeit with some reservations about what that knowledge should be), wanted to provide his homeland with a center of higher learning, and to that end, he stipulated in his will that a university be founded , with funds obtained, among other sources, from the revenues derived from the exploitation of the brandy monopoly (because in this life, everything eventually comes down to taxes or hangovers).
The building was designed by Rodrigo Gil de Hontañón and completed by Juan del Rivero Rada , and its style is none other than the understated elegance of the Herrerian style: an architecture that speaks softly, without unnecessary ornamentation, as if afraid of interrupting a professor in the middle of a lecture. The central courtyard, square in plan, is arranged around a beautiful two-story cloister, supported by Doric and Ionic columns that seem to gaze sternly at the students. On one side, above the portico, is the founding inscription, and above that, the University's coat of arms, with its three fleurs-de-lis and the papal tiara, which is more reminiscent of Rome than Oviedo, although that may change in time.
Porlier Square , which provides access to the building, was once more of a training yard than an urban salon: a place for meetings, semi-private strolls, and informal gatherings under the arcades. Today, it's a thoroughfare for tourists who stop to photograph Úrculo's traveler, but for the long-time resident of Oviedo, the University still sets the pace : the clock in its tower has taught more classes than many professors.
The building suffered serious damage during the October Revolution of 1934 , when it was set on fire—something that, in Spain, seems to be the most definitive way to challenge an institution. The fire destroyed the historical library and part of the archive , which is undoubtedly an intellectual tragedy, but also a metaphor: knowledge, like faith, is tested in the flames. Fortunately, it was lovingly restored in the following decades, maintaining its understated dignity.
Throughout the centuries, its classrooms have been graced by men and women of letters, sciences, and legends : from Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos , the eternal Enlightenment figure of Gijón—who moved to Oviedo in 1757 at the age of thirteen to study Philosophy— to Clarín, author of La Regenta , who made Vetusta a more enduring satire than many educational reforms. And thousands of anonymous students also passed through its halls, with their dreams, their worries, and their eight o'clock classes—those true martyrs of wisdom.
Today the building houses the Rector's Office and the General Secretariat, and is used for formal events , but it retains the air of a secular temple where the word—thought, read, spoken—remains sacred. Its cloister holds echoes of debates that never made it into the newspapers, of hurried steps before an exam, of declarations of love at the foot of a column. It is a place that, without saying a word, says everything.
Text: © Ramón Molleda for asturias.com
