Uclés: The Four Musketeers and More
You must remember this. The best four Musketeers ever (Michael York, Richard Chamberlain, Oliver Reed and Frank Finlay) pursue Rochefort and Milady (Christopher Lee and Fay Dunnaway) to a convent, where York and Lee fight to the death and where Lee is run through (as is the Holy Bible on a lectern) with D’Artagnan’s broken sword.
But first they have to take care of several of Rochefort’s men and set fire to an extension to the convent added on especially for the film.
In the plot the convent is Saint Celia’s at Armentieres, although in reality Hard Day’s Night director Richard Lester chose a monastery at Uclés in the province of Cuenca.
It has been used in many films, series and advertisements, and was also the location for the final battle of the Spanish film Alatriste, starring Vigo Mortensen.
On June 23rd 2018 all that film history was remembered in an event organised by the Town Hall of Uclés and British film buff and author Bob Yareham, who has lived in Valencia since 1981 and is the creator of Movies Made in Spain, a project and web site about over 900 English language films and TV series made in Spain.
The event included talks by various experts, and looked at film history and film tourism in the world, in Spain, in Cuenca province and in Uclés successively, with talks by film tourism and Bollywood expert Laura Tejerina, Secretary of España de Cine, Bob Yareham who focused on cinema castles in Spain, Pepe Alfaro, author of several works about films made in the province of Cuenca and Ana M. Galvéz, Uclés Town Hall Councillor for tourism and culture.
A representative of the Castilla-La Mancha Film Commission talked about the advantages of filming in the area, past, present and future, while Dorian Sanz, the author of a short film shot in Uclés spoke about his projects in and out of Uclés.
There was a presentation of a project to collect and display photos taken during the many movies shot in Uclés and local people talked about their experiences participating in or observing the films, series and advertisements made there.
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