The Convent

DISCOVERING THE HISTORY OF BENIFALLET'S MOST IMPRESSIVE BUILDING

The s. XVIII, Marià de Gras and Jordana, from Móra d'Ebre, married Ramona de Deona and they went to live in Tortosa. His daughter Teresa would marry Manuel de Grau, a native of Benassal, and they would be the parents of Magdalena de Grau and de Gras who, in her will, donated part of her heritage to found, on some land of his property that he had in Benifallet, a convent of the Tertiary Dominican Sisters of the Annunciata, in Vic, which would take the name College of Degrees and Gras and would be inaugurated in 1913. It functioned as a college school for girls and convent of nuns until the arrival of the Spanish Civil War, when the nuns left the municipality due to the socio-political situation of the time. During the revolutionary outbreak of the summer of 1936, the building was ransacked, and clothes, mattresses, kitchen items, religious items and furniture were taken. The artillery impacts visible on the two facades of the building were probably caused by the Francoist Army from the spring of 1938, when the Ebro became a war front and the two sides exchanged artillery fire. In addition, Benifallet suffered at least two aerial bombardments, on March 18 and July 22, 1938. Due to the damage suffered during the nine months of war, the General Directorate of Devastated Regions of the Franco State included Benifallet in the list of Spanish municipalities likely to receive state aid to rebuild part of the affected infrastructure and urban fabric. Thus, in 1940, an item of 67,372 pesetas was approved for de-ruling. It has a U-shaped floor plan, with an open interior patio. The ground floor is porticoed with semi-circular arcades, except in the front part of the courtyard, where the arcades are in ashlar, both in those on the ground floor and in the balustrades of the first floor. The longest arm of the construction is occupied by the old convent and the church, topped with a polygonal apse. The construction materials used are stone and wood ashlars. The interior or patio surface has a sober, linear decoration with sgraffito. The roofs are double-sided roofs. In 1976 the Parish of Benifallet registered this property in its name through article 206 of the Local Finance Regulatory Law. In 1989, an agreement was signed between Benifallet Town Council and the Bishopric of Tortosa under which the latter ceded the use of the convent building to the Town Hall for 29 years. Since then it has become the building of reference for the cultural and associative world of the municipality. It housed the old municipal doctor’s office, the old Santiago Rusiñol Library, the old Nursery School, the Post Office, the Municipal House and housed the headquarters of all the local entities. The building became municipal property in the first quarter of 2020, when the Benifallet City Council effectively purchased it from the Diocese of Tortosa.