It was built taking advantage of a large part of the mosque that existed prior to the conquest of Guadalcanal by the Order of Santiago. We can consider it the oldest in Guadalcanal, as it was blessed as a Christian church by the bishop of Coria, Jaime Sanguineto, who was accompanying the Maestre Don Rodrigo de Iñiguez, in April 1241. This is what Fray Andrés de Guadalupe says and it is confirmed by the existing books in the parish, since according to them, children from nearby villages were brought to this church to be baptised.
Its façades are classical in style, and the tribune at the foot of the church seems to be the work of the 18th century. On the side of the Gospel, a tiled roof has two-by-board basin tiles of the veneras type, Sevillian from the first half of the 16th century.
Here we can see the tombstones of Don Cayetano de Tena e Hidalgo and his wife Doña Josefa de Vargas Federigui, that of Don Ignacio Sánchez Martínez and the Gothic style tombstone of Antón Martín. Also buried in this church is Don Juan Pérez, vicar at the end of the 16th century and beginning of the 17th century; Cristóbal Gordón, knight of the Order of Santiago and ecclesiastical judge of Guadalcanal, who died in the middle of the 18th century, having been the priest of this church for 40 years.
It had a parish priest and five priests.
The church was started at the apse with the intention of advancing towards the west when possible. It is a compound polygonal apse, with five sides of 2.75 metres, formed by powerful walls of more than one metre,
The final result was a church with a single nave, of great width, with very open transversal pointed arches and with little elevation (one metre from the foundation of the pillars to the impost of the arch), covered with a relatively rich coffered ceiling and crowned with an amorphous and diminished apse. On the sides of the two original chapels, they became semi-crossing chapels, as they were isolated from the chancel, and although with a different axis, they were in function of the nave. At the foot, the tower began to be erected so slowly that even the small loopholes (the lower ogee) could be aesthetically changed.
Shortly afterwards, in the transition between the 15th and 16th centuries, some substantial transformations took place, and the current Baptismal Chapel was added to the southern gallery at the foot of the church. It is a quadrangular room open to the nave by means of a single entrance opened in the wall and carved in brick. The construction of the chapel undoubtedly alters the exterior gallery; however, it still has the same location at the eastern end, where the Chapel of Carmen has not yet been enlarged. Inside, at the foot of the nave, the access to the tower is completed, which now culminates in the completion of its three sections with a bell tower with semicircular arches with moulded extradoses of the rocks and stacked trabeation framed in the openings, as well as the pyramid-shaped spire.
It can be considered the oldest in Guadalcanal.
It was declared a National Historic-Artistic Monument in 1979.
It is currently the “Santa Ana” Interpretation and Resource Centre of Sierra Morena.
