Niceto Alcalá-Zamora’s home and museum

C/ Rio, 33.

The museum was the birthplace of the President of the Second Spanish Republic, Niceto Alcalá-Zamora y Torres — a beautiful, senorial house built in the nineteenth century in Calle Rio. The origin of the museum goes back to December 1986, when Alcalá-Zamora’s daughters, Purificación and Isabel, donated the family home to Priego de Córdoba.
The museum was opened to the public for the first time in August 1987, with an exhibition of the life of Alcalá-Zamora, a joint project between the town and the provincial government. A bust of Alcalá-Zamora by the sculptor Aurora Cañero was unveiled in the garden.
On February 17th 1990, the running of the museum was officially handed over to the town council, which had agreed to create an organisation responsible for further research into the life of Alcalá-Zamora. Thus, the Niceto Alcalá-Zamora Foundation was established on October 26th 1993. The museum had to close temporarily at the beginning of 1998, to carry out major structural improvements, restoration and modernisation of the building. It opened again on March 4th 1999, as part of the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Don Niceto’s death.
Our visit begins on the ground floor with the sitting room, where you can still see the same furniture and floor tiles as in the time of the President, and a number of family portraits. In the winter dining room, there is an exhibition of portraits of Alcalá-Zamora himself. The kitchen has been preserved just as it was when he lived in the house, and in the patio is a bust of the President presented by his town in 1987, under an oak tree more than a hundred years old, planted by Alcalá-Zamora in his childhood.
On the first floor, his parents’ bedroom remains untouched. This is where he was born on July 6 1877, and visitors can see his crib, as well as his birth certificate and first photograph.
The remaining rooms offer a detailed history of his private and public life: his early student years, his administrative and political career, as President of the Second Republic, and his eventual exile.
The seventh and last room contains his final photographs, the sofa on which he died on February 18 1949, and the clock, stopped at the time of his death. According to the wishes of his daughters, a lamp remains permanently lit, as a reminder of Alcalá-Zamora’s life.