Logbook · 11 places

What to see and do in Benuza

What to see and do in Benuza (La Cabrera, León): 11 places across monuments, nature, activities and curiosities, with a photo and a Google Maps location.

1 Villages · 2 Monuments · 3 Nature · 2 Activities · 2 Historical milestones · 1 Food and drink

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Spain › Castile and León › León › La Cabrera › Benuza

What to see and do in Benuza

Benuza
Village
Benuza is a municipality of about 455 inhabitants in the traditional comarca of La Cabrera Baja, in the province of León, administratively part of the Consejo Comarcal de El Bierzo and situated in the transition area between Leonese and Galician. The earliest traces of settlement date from Roman times and are linked to gold mining: remains of hilltop settlements may have watched over the channels that carried water to the mines of Las Médulas. It was founded or resettled in the Middle Ages within the Kingdom of León. After the Civil War, La Cabrera was a refuge area for the anti-Francoist guerrilla, known there as escapados. Emigration to France, Belgium and Switzerland in the second half of the 20th century left it with barely a quarter of the population it had in 1900.
Roman canals of Llamas de Cabrera
Monument
A conditioned stretch of the hydraulic network that supplied the gold mines of Las Médulas: more than six hundred kilometres of channels cut into the hillsides, among them the C3, of 143 kilometres, the second longest water conduit of the ancient world.
GR 292.3 trail along the canals of Llamas
Activity
A waymarked route of some six kilometres that starts at Llamas de Cabrera, runs along the bed of the Roman channel C1 and returns by the C3, with stretches carved into the rock above the deep valley of the river Cabrera.
Church of San Esteban de Benuza
Monument
The municipality's mother church, on which the churches of Yebra and Sotillo de Cabrera depended as annexes. It is built with the rubble masonry and slate of the country, the material that defines all the architecture of the Cabrera Baja.
Chestnut tree of the Cristo de Sigüeya
Nature
A monumental chestnut that presides over Sigüeya and is one of the oldest trees in the Cabrera Baja, a witness to the old economy of the souto, when the chestnut was the basic sustenance of these mountain villages.
Mountain range of Lardera
Nature
An alignment of quartzites and slates that closes off the municipal district of Benuza to the north; from its slopes descends the stream that crosses the village before joining the river Cabrera in the vicinity of Pombriego.
Gorges of the Cabrera river in Pombriego
Nature
The Cabrera is one of the fullest-flowing tributaries of the Sil: it rises in the glacial lake of La Baña and cuts a very narrow valley through slate that reaches, beside Pombriego, some of its tightest and shadiest stretches.
Roman gold workings of Sigüeya and Lomba
Historical milestone
Recent surveys have documented, within the municipal areas of Sigüeya and Lomba, in Benuza, several Roman-period gold-mining operations, with open-pit faces and rock-cut structures linked to the same hydraulic system that fed Las Médulas.
The transfer of the Cabrera Baja to the province of León
Historical milestone
In 1821 the villages of Benuza were placed within the short-lived province of Villafranca and, after its dissolution, the provincial division of 1833 assigned them definitively to León, closing centuries of dependence on El Bierzo.
Pilgrimage of la Virgen del Valle de Llamas de Cabrera
Activity
Llamas de Cabrera honours the Virgen del Valle on the first Sunday after Easter, one of the dates that brings residents back to a village that barely keeps any inhabitants through the long winters of the sierra.
Chestnuts of the soutos of Cabrera Baja
Food and drink
The chestnut soutos surrounding Benuza, Sigüeya and Silván sustained the Cabrera larder for centuries: the chestnut was smoke-dried and eaten boiled, roasted or in stew throughout the winter.