Village
Frumales is a municipality in the province of Segovia (Castile and León), belonging to the Comunidad de Villa y Tierra de Cuéllar, within the Tierra de Pinares, with a territory made up of hillsides, dry and irrigated fields and pine groves. With about 120 inhabitants, it absorbed in 1864 the abandoned settlement of Aldehuela de Cuéllar, of which the Aldehuela mill and the remains of a bridge survive; the Virgin venerated there is now carried in procession the first Sunday of May at the church of Frumales. Its church of Nuestra Señora de la Asunción, begun in the 13th century, preserves Romanesque capitals and a pointed triumphal arch with the Adoration of the Magi on one of its capitals; an altarpiece from the church, with paintings by the Master of Valseca, is now kept in the Museo Catedralicio de Segovia.
Monument
Begun in the thirteenth century, it preserves Romanesque elements with arcading and decorated capitals that have survived the later alterations; it is the landmark building of a municipality of one hundred and twenty inhabitants.
Curiosity
Before the door of the parish church stands an old elm, a survivor of the Dutch elm disease that devastated the Castilian elm groves; the tree shades the atrium and works as a landmark and meeting place for the residents.
Historical milestone
In 1864 Frumales absorbed the district of Aldehuela de Cuéllar, already depopulated, and with it its lands, its mill and the ruins of its bridge; the operation extended the municipality to its present 27.66 square kilometres.
Monument
In the deserted hamlet of Aldehuela de la Vega, uninhabited since 1864, when its area was merged into that of Frumales, the mill that harnessed the stream and the remains of an old bridge are preserved. The date the mill was built is unknown, although it already existed in the 18th century, when the cadastre of the Marquis de la Ensenada recorded it as the property of Pedro Santos, with an output of 485 reales; it was part of the group of mills that Cuéllar and its Community of Villa y Tierra used for centuries to grind grain. It stopped working in the 1970s and today, privately owned, it survives although heavily altered.
Activity
On the first Sunday of May the locals go up in pilgrimage to the site of the old village of Aldehuela to honour their Virgin; the other great dates are the Assumption and San Roque, both on 15 August.
Nature
The municipal district combines slopes, dry-farmed fields, irrigated crops and pinewoods at 816 metres of altitude, an agrarian mosaic typical of the eastern edge of the Tierra de Pinares, where the sandy soil allows market gardening under irrigation.
Curiosity
The Comunidad de Villa y Tierra of Cuéllar is still alive: it is governed by regulations of 1989 and groups thirty-six municipalities plus the town of Cuéllar, governed by a general assembly of municipal representatives.
Monument
The church, Romanesque of the thirteenth century and raised in limestone rubble masonry, has a rectangular apse and three naves separated by a pointed triumphal arch; beside the entrance Romanesque arcading and capitals were located.
Monument
At the foot of the church stands an eighteenth-century bell gable that tops the medieval fabric, the most recognisable silhouette of a village of one hundred and twenty inhabitants built in limestone rubble masonry.
Monument
An altarpiece from the parish church of Frumales, with paintings attributed to the Master of Valseca, is kept today in the Museo Catedralicio of Segovia, far from the rural church for which it was painted.
Curiosity
The interior keeps a choir beam decorated with polychrome plant motifs, a hemispherical baptismal font and carvings of the Assumption, the Magdalene and San Juan Bautista spread through the naves.
Historical milestone
On 21 May 1095 Count Pedro Ansúrez donated ecclesiastical tithes citing the place as Frunmales; it is the first known documentary mention of the village, barely twenty years after its settlement.
Historical milestone
The settlement of population at this point begins around 1076, when the area was still frontier land and the Christian resettlement was advancing from the Duero towards the line of the Cega and the Pirón.
Historical milestone
Between 1857 and 1930 the population of Perosillo was counted together with that of Frumales because they shared a parish, although the place kept its condition as an independent municipality throughout that period.
Nature
The Cerquilla stream, a right-bank tributary of the Cega River, runs for about 30 kilometres through the north of the province of Segovia. It rises in the municipality of Fuentepiñel, crosses the south of Fuentesaúco de Fuentidueña and separates Cozuelos de Fuentidueña from Olombrada before crossing the town centre of Frumales, spanned by two bridges, where it takes in the Cagarroñas stream. Near its mouth, it enters the municipality of Cuéllar through Dehesa Mayor, takes in the Mondajos stream and begins to mark the boundary of the Mar de Pinares, until flowing into the Cega River at the Tabladillo site. Around it lie hillsides, dry farmland, small irrigated plots and pine woods.
Nature
Two spots mark the village's walks: Los Hornillos, a kilometre from the built-up area, and the Fuente La Nava, two kilometres away, points of water and shade in a municipal district of 27 square kilometres at 816 metres of altitude.
Curiosity
From this village in the province of Segovia, which today numbers a little over a hundred residents and is made up mostly of older people, came Luis Mariano Minguela Muñoz, born on 5 January 1960. He played as a midfielder throughout his career at Real Valladolid, the club with which he won the 1984 Copa de la Liga, and was capped once for the Spanish national team, on 20 September 1989, in the 1-0 win over Poland at the Riazor stadium in A Coruña. After retiring from football, he held posts at the Diputación de Valladolid and was mayor of Laguna de Duero between 2011 and 2015 for the Partido Popular.
Food and drink
The pine woods of the Tierra de Pinares that surround the municipal district give in autumn the saffron milk cap, the most sought-after mushroom of the comarca, prepared grilled with garlic and parsley or stewed with potato and chorizo.