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Rancho Alfaro

Santo Domingo de Pirón, Alfoz de Segovia, Segovia

1 Villages · 1 Monuments · 1 Curiosities

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Rancho Alfaro

Monument · Santo Domingo de Pirón, Alfoz de Segovia, Segovia

An 18th-century wool-washing and shearing shed, built around 1750 by José Alfaro, secretary to Ferdinand VI, on the site of the deserted medieval hamlet of Puertas, documented since 1247. Alfaro completely remodelled it as a ranch for washing and shearing transhumant merino wool, beside the Cañada Real Soriana Occidental, the drove road that linked Soria with Badajoz, near the Pirón river; it had four large tanks and the chimney of a furnace that heated the water used to wash the wool cold and hot before it was exported to Europe. It became one of the most important ranches in the country, although production declined and it was abandoned at the end of the 19th century. In private hands and without legal protection, its state of semi-ruin led it in 2024 onto Hispania Nostra's Lista Roja del Patrimonio.

Photo: Arturo Francisco Barbero (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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