Rivas, the fourth Nicaraguan city founded by the Spanish, is already 303 years old

By: Intertextual Writing/ contacto@intertextualcr.com

This coming May 29 commemorates the 303 years since the current city of Rivas was elevated to a villa. The first was Granada and in the same year León. Two places that not only bore the names of Spanish cities, but also shared the same concept of urban development.

A concept that was guided by the ideas of Marcos Vitruvio, the father of architecture, who established the center of the city from a square and built all its administrative institutions around it.

Many years later came Nueva Segovia, a city located in the central zone of the country, whose name comes from the analogy of the Segovian pine forests like those that existed in the province of Segovia in Spain.

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And then Rivas emerged. A region that became independent from Granada and that in 1720 obtained its title of town, granted by the then governor and captain general of the Royal Court of Guatemala, Francisco Rodríguez de Rivas.

Contrary to the three previous cities, the name of the city of Rivas has nothing to do with other Spanish cities, on the contrary, its title and coat of arms reflect the original name of this city, which is Villa de la Purísima Concepción de Nicaragua inhabited by the Nicaraos.

Later, Rivas was added, which is the surname of the Governor of the Viceroyalty of Guatemala or the representative of King Carlos of Spain, as a recognition of the efforts he made for the independence of the city.

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Sergio Espinoza, a journalist and researcher from Rivera, points out that this 303rd anniversary of the city has a political significance and popular sovereignty, in which the people meet, and decide to elect their authorities.

That is why Rivas is known as the fourth council, or the fourth assembly of citizens who decide their present and future. It recognizes that with this act there is an independence of the citizens with respect to Granada, because the authorities, the parish priest, the economy and all public affairs were managed from what we know today as the great sultana.

He also points out that with the celebrations of this anniversary, the birth of the city is celebrated, which at that time was made up of a group of haciendas in which some 3,000 people lived.

«Contrary to the other cities here the city begins to be built from the rural to the urban, since they were fundamentally cocoa farms that were populated according to the needs of labor and had their own ejidal lands.» Espinoza assures.

It should be noted that the territory of what is now Rivas has an importance in the history of the country, since it was here where the dialogue between the Spanish conquistador Gil González Dávila and Cacique Nicarao took place, in what is considered the first expedition by land carried out by the Spanish on Nicaraguan soil.