Logbook · 2 places

What to see and do in Bercial de Zapardiel

What to see and do in Bercial de Zapardiel (La Moraña, Ávila): 2 places across monuments, nature, activities and curiosities, with a photo and a Google Maps location.

1 Villages · 1 Nature

Towns near Bercial de Zapardiel

Spain › Castile and León › Ávila › La Moraña › Bercial de Zapardiel

What to see and do in Bercial de Zapardiel

Bercial de Zapardiel
Village
Bercial de Zapardiel is a town of around 166 inhabitants in the comarca of La Moraña, province of Ávila, on the banks of the Zapardiel river. Its Church of the Assumption, Baroque and of exposed brick, has a Latin-cross plan with three naves and a three-tiered bell tower; at the highest point of the town the remains of a defensive tower from the 12th to 14th centuries are preserved, and a short distance away, those of the old Romanesque-Mudéjar church of San Martín, from the 12th century. The prehistoric site of El Tomillar places the origins of the settlement between the end of the Chalcolithic and the beginning of the Bronze Age. On 3 February it celebrates San Blas, a patronal feast of great tradition, with the conga dance, a coming-of-age festival for young men.
The Zapardiel river
Nature
The Zapardiel is a tributary of the Duero a little over 105 kilometres long that rises at 1,183 metres of altitude in the sierra de Ávila, at the laguna de San Martín de las Cabezas, and crosses the Moraña, giving its name to half a dozen villages, among them Bercial de Zapardiel. Its modest bed traces a vega of meadows amid rain-fed cereal land, but today it is badly degraded by agricultural runoff, discharges and the overexploitation of aquifers, to the point of drying up almost completely except during the great winter floods. Cervantes recalled it in his Viaje del Parnaso as “Zapardiel, famous for its fishing”, though little remains today of that abundance.