Some of the treasures of the history of the Province of Saint Nicholas of Tolentine of the Order of Augustinian Recollects and the environments and spaces where it has carried out its work throughout history and today.
The church was the work of architects Vallejo and Dampierre, whose cornerstone was laid in 1953 and inaugurated in 1959. Two slender towers with slate spires, crowned with crosses, mark the sacred space of the church. The symmetry of the edifice, with its red brick, is contrasted by the grey granite and white stone of the sculptural ensemble by Antonio Martínez Penella (1917-2008), featuring a prominent four-meter-high statue of the Saint aiding a family and a façade with sixteen coffered images depicting her life.
The interior of the temple is notable for its verticality, brilliance, and the lightness of its walls, with the coloured light from its stained-glass windows (golden yellow at noon, violet towards the north, and red towards the east) and the blue splendour of the vault. The ground floor is circular and rises to a great height in the form of a truncated cone. At the base of the vault, at the highest level, is the Trinitarian doxology in large letters.
Below this top level, Javier Clavo Gil (1918-1994) placed a mosaic of the Holy Trinity at the forefront, interspersed with phrases from Saint Augustine and paintings of Saint Monica, Saint Thomas of Villanova, Saint Juliana of Cornillon, Blessed Vicente de San Antonio, Blessed Francisco de Jesus, Blessed Josefa of Beniganim, Saint John of Sahagun, and Saint Clare of Montefalco.
Descending further, above the presbytery is an almost five-meter-high statue of Saint Rita, created by Antonio Martínez Penella and sculpted in wood. The statue is characterized by its simplicity and purity of lines, with an almost cylindrical body; it is ambiguous whether it ascends to heaven or descends to aid her devotees. It is set against a backdrop of undulating slats. The altar is made of polished black marble from Marquina in the northern province of Biscay, Spain, matching the ambo or lectern and the floor of the presbytery.
Javier Clavo crafted the Via Crucis, situated in a band encircling almost the entire lower circle about seven meters above the ground, composed of fragmented mosaic, expressionistic or symbolistic in style.
