city Hall
by Lumbrales
From the House of the Count
La Villa de Lumbrales, head of the El Abadengo region, is located 90 km. northwest of the province of Salamanca and 27 km. from the border with Portugal. With a population of around 1700 inhabitants, Lumbrales is an agricultural and livestock town that also has an excellent offer of commercial and public services.
The Plaza Mayor, with the Clock Tower, enabled as an Archaeological Museum, the Town Hall and a beautiful view of the monumental Parish Church of Our Lady of the Assumption, is the obligatory point from which to start the visit.
.
In the Clock Tower , once a plenary hall, a jail and even bulls of halters, the largest concentration of archaeological remains in the region is located. Unique pieces that tell a story as rich in events as it is in art and culture.
.
From here you can go to the Parish Church of Our Lady of the Assumption , Patron Saint of the Villa. Beautiful and cathedral-like temple from the 16th century with an altarpiece similar to that of the El Escorial Monastery.
.
Its environment is one of the most emblematic spaces of the town, with places such as the Casa de los Condes, today the Tourism Office and the Visitor Reception Center of the Vetón Territory , where in addition to knowing the possibilities that the visit to the Vetón Territory offers, You can visit the rooms of the Archaeological Museum, the one designed to recreate the environment in which Ricardo Pinto da Costa lived, and an Exhibition of Models of buildings from Lumbrales and Crafts of Yesteryear. On the western façade of this building you can see the so-called Burro de la Barrera , a vetón boar of the best routes in the province, as well as the Cultural Center of the Villa, included within the regional Performing Arts circuit.
.
Another boar , an iron recreation of the one from Las Merchanas, presides over the Plaza del Mercado, the center of the busy weekly market on Wednesdays, where the Ermita del Humilladero and the Municipal Library are also located. In the middle of the square we can see a work by Ángel Mateos, Dolmen VI , 1973, a concrete sculpture installed that same year.
Once this first tour of the streets and most characteristic places of the town is done, we can visit its surroundings. Starting from the abandoned railway station and the always enigmatic and contradictory beauty of its siding, declared an Asset of Cultural Interest with the category of Monument in 2000, we head towards the path of the old tin mine.
.
The Plaza de la Iglesia seen from one of the balconies of the Casa de los Condes.
Leaving the municipal swimming pools to the right, where we can go for a dip if the occasion and time allows it, we arrive at the valley of La Navalito , where some stones from a thousand-year-old dolmen still stand. Beyond is the Camaces river, whose waters bathe another prehistoric relic: the Castro de Las Merchanas . This pre-Roman vetón enclosure, one of the most important forts in the province, preserves practically its entire wall, in addition to the characteristic areas of tumbled stones and other remains from Roman times. Next to the wall, which is accessed through the restored Camaces fishing village, is the also recovered Tío Justo Mill .
Other alternatives, if you are referring to walking, could be a tour of the Colmenar Trail or a visit to Lombo de los Rollos , both places full of nature and even, in the second of the cases, legendary.
.
From the Visigothic Period and the High Middle Ages there are no signs of habitability, which suggests the depopulation of these lands due to the pressure of the Muslim invasion. It will be already in the twelfth century when we find a historical reference in the restoration document of the diocese of Ciudad Rodrigo, in 1175. There, King Fernando II of León mentions, along with two other towns, "Santa Maria de Liminares ", from which the current name of the town derives.
.
From this date we take another leap in history until 1581, the year in which, according to the Monumental Catalog of Spain, the first mass is said in the Church of Our Lady of the Assumption, the work of the architect Rodrigo de la Gándara .
In 1647 another Rodrigo, Rodrigo de Castro, governor of Beira, along with Sancho Manuel, after besieging Gallegos de Argañán and San Felices without much success, vented his anger against Lumbrales, setting fire to part of the town.
From the beginning of this seventeenth century, the clock tower is supposed, the most important civil building in the municipality. From 1757 it is the Ermita del Humilladero.
.
In 1888 the Infanta Doña Isabel de Borbón, daughter of Queen Isabel II known as "la chata", was in Lumbrales on behalf of her brother Alfonso XII on the occasion of the inauguration of the Fuente de San Esteban-Barca d´Alba railway. Ricardo Pinto da Costa, then consul of Portugal in Spain, would be one of the main promoters of this engineering work, which earned him the title of Count of Lumbrales, granted in 1888 by Queen Maria Cristina.
