You should be standing in front of a textured stone building featuring a small tiled overhang above an open square doorway, located right beside a tall stone archway with heavy dark metal doors.
This structure was born in the seventeenth century as a convent for Carmelite nuns, a Catholic religious order dedicated to a strictly contemplative, cloistered life. It was a space built for pure spiritual devotion. But celestial plans often crash into brutal reality. During the Spanish Civil War, the religious compound was violently looted. Its magnificent main altarpiece was stripped away, and these holy halls were repurposed to function as a prison. It is a perfect example of how heavenly ideals and gritty human endurance often battle it out within the exact same walls.
But just as Fernando Zóbel breathed new life into the hanging houses we explored earlier, Cuenca has a habit of magnificent reinvention. In 1998, this labyrinth of a building opened as the Antonio Pérez Foundation, cementing the town as a magnet for modern artistic rebellion.
Antonio Pérez himself lived a life straight out of a novel. Exiled to Paris during the Franco dictatorship, he co-founded the legendary Ruedo Ibérico publishing house in 1961. This operation became a beacon for European dissidents, smuggling banned anti-fascist literature back into Spain. Pérez was a remarkably charismatic figure in bohemian Paris. The acclaimed writer Juan Marsé fondly remembered him strolling down Boulevard Saint Germain with a red scarf whipping in the wind, the pockets of his trench coat absolutely overflowing with books.
When Pérez eventually settled in Cuenca, he brought that vibrant spirit with him. He was affectionately known as a strolling thief. During his walks, he would pick up discarded everyday trash, things like rusty cans or trampled candy wrappers, and elevate them into art. His most famous piece is a cheeky work called Sobresaura. He took a beautiful silkscreen, a type of high quality fine art print, gifted by his friend the renowned painter Antonio Saura, and slapped a crushed, oxidized tin can right on top of it to act as eyes. It was a brilliantly irreverent conversation between street garbage and celebrated fine art. The famous psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan once assured Pérez that he did not suffer from a hoarding disorder, pointing out that Pérez did not just collect junk, he only kept what he actually liked.
Operating a modern art museum in a maze-like historic convent brings its own kind of chaos. The foundation director has admitted that the sheer unpredictability of modern artists causes plenty of backstage drama. During one exhibition, the team had to work non-stop for nearly an entire day just to figure out how to physically wedge a massive five-by-six meter painting by the artist Antón Lamazares through these narrow, ancient corridors.
If you want to explore the thirty-five rooms of art inside, they are open most days during the late morning and early evening, though they are closed on Mondays.
Now, let us walk about three minutes down the road to our final stop, the Building of the Provincial Historical Archive of Cuenca, where we will uncover one of the darkest chapters preserved in Cuenca's long history.
