Village
La Robla is a town in the comarca of the Concejo de Alba, in the province of León, standing at 955 metres in the valley of the river Bernesga; besides the capital, the municipality brings together another nine rural localities and has 3,574 inhabitants in total. Its name may derive from the Asturian-Leonese robla, the signature with which livestock agreements were sealed at Leonese fairs. In the Middle Ages the castle of Alba halted the advance of Almanzor and organised the territory into a council, which in the early 19th century merged with the neighbouring council of Fenar to form the present-day town hall. The La Robla railway, which from 1894 linked it with Bilbao on the longest narrow-gauge line in Europe at 335 kilometres, boosted the economy in the late 19th century and brought the thermal power station, which operated from 1971 to 2020.
Monument
Fortress located on the Peña del Castillo, near Llanos de Alba, in La Robla, overlooking the valley of the río Bernesga and the road that linked León with Gijón over the Pajares pass. Built by Alfonso III of Asturias in the 9th century, probably on an earlier Roman settlement, it retained two defensive lines with a wall two hundred metres long and three metres thick. It played a key role in the revolt of Alfonso III's sons: in 910 Queen Jimena handed it over, together with the castles of Luna, Gordón and Arbolio, to her eldest son García I of León, which forced the king's abdication. In 997 it withstood the attack of Almanzor, and passed through the hands of various magnates until the Treaty of Tordehumos of 1194 returned it to the kingdom of León. Now in ruins and difficult to reach, it is declared a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection).
Historical milestone
In 997 the fortress of Alba, in La Robla, withstood the attack of Almanzor's troops and, together with the sister castles of Luna, Gordón and Arbolio, kept closed the mountain passes giving access to Asturias.
Monument
The sanctuary of the Virgin of Celada, in La Robla (León), is a simple Romanesque building of rubble masonry from the 13th and 14th centuries, with a square presbytery under a ribbed vault and a rectangular nave under a barrel vault reinforced by buttresses. It preserves a retable in Herrerian style, with scenes such as the Incarnation, the Visitation and the Resurrection, presided over by the Romanesque image of the Virgin of Celada, flanked by the coats of arms of the Quiñones family. Local tradition links its origin to an ambush in 722 in which Christian troops, after the Battle of Covadonga, defeated the Muslim rearguard with her aid. It is the devotional focus of the municipality: on the first weekend of August, villages from the surrounding area gather for the pilgrimage of Nuestra Señora de las Nieves.
Monument
An eighteenth-century hydraulic work that carried water to the meadowland of La Robla; its construction caught the attention of Jovellanos, who noted it in his diary during the journey he made through these mountains in 1795.
Historical milestone
On 11 August 1894 the line between La Robla and Valmaseda was opened, the main stretch of the railway linking La Robla, in León, with Bilbao: 335 kilometres of metre-gauge track, the longest narrow-gauge route in western Europe, built to carry coal from the León and Palencia coalfields to the Biscay steel industry. The project, promoted by the engineer Mariano Zuaznávar, crosses the provinces of León, Palencia, Cantabria, Burgos and Biscay. After going bankrupt in 1972 it passed into the hands of FEVE, and in 1991 passenger traffic ceased, resuming partially in 2003. Since 2013 its infrastructure has been managed by Adif.
Historical milestone
The coal-fired power station, located beside the río Bernesga, was a joint project undertaken from 1965 by Hidroeléctrica de Moncabril, Hullera Vasco-Leonesa, Endesa and Unión Eléctrica Madrileña, later joined by Unión Fenosa. Its first unit, of 270 MW, was connected to the grid on 2 September 1971, and the second, of 350 MW, did not come into operation until 10 November 1984; for half a century it was the largest employer in the area. It burned coal from the nearby coalfields of Santa Lucía, Ciñera and Matallana, and according to a 2008 Greenpeace report it ranked eighth among Spain's most polluting coal plants. Its closure, on 30 June 2020, brought to an end the industrial cycle opened by the mines and the railway.
Activity
Every August the residents climb to the Romanesque hermitage of Celada for the municipality's great festival, which shares the calendar with Corpus and with a motorcycle rally that brings together thousands of attendees in September.