Despite its urban development, the city of Guadalajara has managed to preserve its old Center, Historic Center, which, loaded with years and stories, invites you to be walked, as the best way to live and enjoy it.
The old chronicles tell that this Center had a property as its heart, where 455 years ago, sixty-three young heads of families met in what is now known as the Plaza de los Fundadores, and they swore by their honor never to check out the new town.
Contemplating the beautiful bronze relief that recalls the event, we can hear their voices and know their names. Cristóbal de Oñate and Miguel de Ibarra, along with the courageous Beatriz Hernández - “el Reyes mi gallo” -, remain as vigilant witnesses that the oath of our grandparents is fulfilled by the new generations. A long band that crosses the monument from end to end contains, for the history and memory of Guadalajara, the names and regions of the founding fathers: mountain people, Andalusians, Extremadura, Castilian, Biscayan, Portuguese, etc., whose mixture created the character hospitable, generous, cheerful and hardworking from the people of Guadalajara.
For centuries, this old square was the scene of everything, from the weekly flea markets, where the term that today distinguishes the children of Guadalajara -tapatíos- was coined, to military parades and executions of thugs. In the last century, a governor had the idea of building a coliseum of such magnificence that it was the pride and honor of the city. With quarries, stones and ashlars from the ruined convents of nuns and friars, what would become the Alarcón Theater was built, but fate would have it that its promoter -Santos Degollado- died in one of the thousand battles of the War of the Reform and thus its name He was eternal in his work, because even today the Degollado Theater remembers him.
All theaters have their ghost, their legend, and this is no exception. The councils say that since sacred stones have been used in its construction, the curse weighs on him that he will collapse when the bronze eagle that crowns the center of the great arch of the forum releases the chains that it holds between claws and beak. Fortunately, this has not happened yet.
Our steps now go to the old building of the Audiencia, first, and of the State government later: the Government Palace.
The engolado governors of Nueva Galicia lived in it; The liberating priest Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla also stayed and left here to be defeated in the last battle of his independence period. Then the governors of the new state of Jalisco occupied it; It was the seat of the federal government when the hermetic Benito Juárez and his cabinet of ministers fled from the conservative troops of Miramón and Márquez; here the only moment was staged in which the Benemérito was about to be shot, but "the brave do not murder!" Guillermo Prieto said to the platoon and saved the president's life.
In addition to this palace, in the Center we find the most representative building in the city, the Cathedral, and the most balanced and beautiful construction of all: the old San José Seminary, now converted into a museum.
This short tour is part of the tour that the visitor should not miss, especially if he does it in a typical calender and allows the driver to tell him the old stories that inhabit the Historic Center of Guadalajara.
