Plaza de la Constitución

Located in front of the Town Hall building, this square has a great notoriety, as it was the scene of the proclamation of D. Rafael del Riego, from the balcony of the house located in front of the square, on 1 January 1820, General Rafael del Riego proclaimed the cry of freedom. To commemorate this act, the Town Hall in 1916 ordered a plaque to be placed in honour of that 1st of January 1820, which reads as follows: ‘On the 1st of January 1820 and from the main balcony of this house the undefeated General D. Rafael de Riego Nuñez proclaimed the Constitution of 1812; the glory of national liberties’. The Town Hall, wishing to perpetuate this famous event, ordered this tombstone to be placed. Year MCMXVI (1916). As a result of the military conflict of 1936, it was removed from its location, and was later placed with the arrival of democracy in 1980. It is a new tombstone, as the old one is fragmented and we have it under custody. In the centre of this square we can see a monument dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, sculpted by Delgado Brackenbury, son of the village, made of stone and placed in 1940. This sculptor made great monuments in Seville: The Fountains of the Lions, The Four Seasons of the Prado, The Fountain of the Puerta de Jerez, etc. On 19 March 2023, the monument to Rafael del Riego was inaugurated, the work of local artist Luis Rodríguez Castro, in compliance with ‘Decree LXVII of 21 June 1822, which granted the status of city to Las Cabezas de San Juan “for having given the first cry of freedom here on the morning of 1 January 1820”. It also granted the town a coat of arms and established the construction of a monument ‘to the glory of the army of the city of San Fernando’ ‘on the same site where the second battalion of Asturias first proclaimed the Constitution’. The square was remodelled in 2023.