The Donkey of the Barrier
The Burro de la Barrera presides over the main entrance of the Palace of the Counts
Father César Morán wrote in "La BasÃlica Teresiana", back in 1919, that the first manifestations of Iberian sculpture are probably those monstrous animals that abound especially in the Duero and Tagus basins, known by the name of bulls. , boars, bears, bugs, etc. And among them the bull on the Salamanca bridge stood out; the boar of Monleón, the boar of Ciudad Rodrigo or the donkey of the arenal , in Lumbrales ... "a group of sculptures product of an extremely crude, primitive and barbarian art that took its first steps".
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It is evident that Father Morán was wrong: perhaps he is monstrous, rude and perhaps barbarous; primitive ... no doubt, but donkey ... of course, come on!
Our Donkey has the attributes clearly visible.
Of granite, with dimensions of 135 centimeters long, by 107 high, today it stands, with its attitude of attacking and its extremities joined by two, in two in front of the west facade of the Casa de los Condes and very close to the Parish Church of the Virgin of the Assumption, in its day of the Castle. It seems clear that there must have been a fort similar to the Merchanas walled on this mound, and that is where the Barrera thing would come from.
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Recent finds allow us to suspect its room during the second Iron Age and Roman times.
It is, together with the Wild Boar of Yecla la Vieja, one of the best made.