Logbook · 10 places

What to see and do in Endrinal

What to see and do in Endrinal (Guijuelo, Salamanca): 10 places across monuments, nature, activities and curiosities, with a photo and a Google Maps location.

1 Villages · 6 Monuments · 3 Curiosities

How far each place is from the centre of Endrinal

Casas de Monleón 3.6 km

Towns near Endrinal

Spain › Castile and León › Salamanca › Guijuelo › Endrinal

What to see and do in Endrinal

Casas de Monleón
Curiosity
Casas de Monleón is a hamlet in the municipality of Endrinal, in the extreme south-east of the province of Salamanca, founded around 1200 when settlers from northern Spain resettled these central sierras during the Reconquista. It is said to have housed many of the servants who worked in nearby Monleón, a village with a wall and a tower that may have been the seat of local government. Near the hamlet there are tombs cut into flat rocks, of Celtic origin, which popular culture usually identifies as former wine presses, and in the highest part of the hamlet a ruined church is preserved. The population, devoted chiefly to farming and livestock, celebrates its patron saint in August, with concerts and dances in the square and a popular paella lunch on Sunday.
Endrinal
Village
Endrinal is a municipality in the province of Salamanca (Castile and León), in the comarca of Guijuelo, within the sub-comarca of Entresierras, made up of the settlements of Endrinal, Casas de Monleón and Villar de Leche, now depopulated. Founded during the León resettlement of the late 12th century, it was included within the Alfoz de Monleón; at that time the castle of Valdemedina, of Arab origin, was rebuilt at Villar de Leche, and the León monarchy used it for the defence of this part of the kingdom. With 201 inhabitants, compared with the 524 it had in the mid-19th century, its church of San Pedro, from the 16th century, was built over an earlier one with a crypt and tombs of slate slabs.
The church of San Fabián y San Sebastián
Monument
Built in the sixteenth century with masonry and mortar, it has a single nave and is in progressive ruin: it was abandoned in 1980 and its roof finished collapsing in 2011, leaving the walls standing above the upper part of the village.
The rock-cut tombs
Monument
Near the hamlet, graves cut into flat granite outcrops are preserved, attributed to the pre-Roman and early medieval settlement of these ranges; popular culture, by contrast, identifies them with old wine presses.
The speech of "la mi casa"
Curiosity
In the Spanish spoken in the hamlet, colloquialisms of Leonese and Portuguese root survive, such as placing the definite article before the possessive and saying «la mi casa» instead of «mi casa», a feature the comarca shares with the border with Portugal.
The church of San Pedro de Endrinal
Monument
The church of San Pedro de Endrinal (Guijuelo district, Salamanca) stands on an earlier church that had a crypt beneath what is now the sacristy; that earlier building dated back at least to the 11th century, as shown by the slate-slab graves found nearby. The present church dates from the 16th century, with a chancel of granite ashlar, ribbed vaults in the main chapel and a decoration of balls on the exterior.
The hermitage of the Virgen del Mensegal
Monument
Some two kilometres south of the urban centre, this single-nave hermitage was built in the sixteenth century over an earlier building. Inside, the Virgen del Mensegal and Saint John are venerated, the patrons of the municipality's main festivals.
The hermitage of El Humilladero
Monument
A small seventeenth-century construction raised beside the cemetery, it preserves from the sixteenth century its south-facing doorway, preceded by a porch supported on four granite columns. It gives its name to the Cristo del Humilladero, much venerated in the village.
The castle of Valdemedina
Monument
In the hamlet of Villar de Leche, on a rise next to the channel of the Alagón, stands what remains of the keep of a fortress built in the eighth century, taken by the Kingdom of León in the tenth and altered up to the thirteenth.
The half-excavated bullring
Curiosity
Beside the hermitage of El Mensegal a bullring half cut into the ground is preserved; the existence of a bull-pen ring in this same place is documented as early as the fifteenth century, and amateur bullfights are still held in it during the festivals.