Logbook · 2 places

What to see and do in Balboa

What to see and do in Balboa (El Bierzo, León): 2 places across monuments, nature, activities and curiosities, with a photo and a Google Maps location.

1 Villages · 1 Monuments

How far each place is from the centre of Balboa

Church of Santa Marina de Balboa 50 m

Towns near Balboa

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What to see in Barjas 12 km · 2 places
What to see in Villafranca del Bierzo 14 km · 3 places
What to see in Corullón 17 km · 3 places
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Spain › Castile and León › León › El Bierzo › Balboa

What to see and do in Balboa

Balboa
Village
Balboa is a hamlet of El Bierzo, in the province of León, with about 270 inhabitants, at 720 metres in the valley of the río Balboa; it is one of the municipalities of León where Galician is spoken, and its name is said to derive from the Latin vallis bona, good valley. It is already recorded in 988, when Vermudo II donated it to the monastery of Samos, and in 1164 it appears again in the confirmation of privileges of the archdeaconry of Triacastela granted by Fernando II of León. Its fortress belonged to the Rodríguez de Valcárcel family and passed in the 15th century to the Álvarez Osorio family, whose grandson received in 1456 from Enrique IV the title of Count of Lemos, linked to Balboa until, in the 16th century, the fortress passed to the Marquises of Villafranca. It preserves the 14th-century castle and the church of Santa Marina, from the 13th to the 16th centuries.
Church of Santa Marina de Balboa
Monument
The church of Santa Marina stands in the valley of the Balboa river, in the Valcarce comarca, where pallozas are still preserved, in a municipality whose first written mention appears in a donation that Bermudo II made to the monastery of Samos in the year 988. A temple of Romanesque origin reworked in Renaissance style, it was declared Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) on 3 June 1993. Its original fabric, with a single nave and a chancel with a semicircular apse preceded by a straight bay, was built in the 12th century or the early 13th; in the 16th century the structure was altered and the tower begun, and between the 17th century and the early 18th it took on its present form. It was restored between 2005 and 2006, and its high altarpiece in 2010.