Village
Galende is a municipality in the province of Zamora, in the comarca of Sanabria, with 1,019 inhabitants, situated right within the Lake Sanabria Natural Park, the largest lake of glacial origin on the Iberian Peninsula, with 318.7 hectares and a maximum depth of 53 metres. The municipality brings together several localities, among them San Martín de Castañeda and Ribadelago, and its main settlement, crossed by the Tera river, is divided into three quarters, with an old mill dam in the lowest one. The natural park, covering 22,000 hectares, preserves up to 35 lagoons of glacial origin. A local legend places beneath the lake's waters a village submerged by a divine curse, whose bells are heard every St John's Eve. It is already documented as far back as the year 927.
Monument
The monastery of San Martín de Castañeda stands on the slope of a mountain above the north shore of the lago de Sanabria, in the hamlet of the same name in the municipality of Galende (Zamora), and is one of the finest examples of Romanesque architecture in Zamora. Of Visigothic origin, it was restored around the year 916 by Abbot Martino and a group of Mozarabic monks who had come from San Cebrián de Mazote fleeing drought and plague, and who found sustenance in the lake's fisheries. In 1150 Alfonso VII granted the site to the monk Pedro Gutiérrez, who restored monastic life under the Rule of Saint Benedict as a daughter house of Carracedo; under that abbey's abbot, Martín IV, the present Romanesque church was built, already in the 12th century. Declared a Monumento Histórico-Artístico Nacional (Spain's top heritage designation at the time) on 3 June 1931, it today houses the visitor centre of the lago de Sanabria nature reserve.
Nature
The lago de Sanabria, carved out by the Tera glacier during the Würm glaciation, is the largest lake of glacial origin on the Iberian Peninsula, covering 318.7 hectares with a maximum depth of 53 metres, at around 997 metres above sea level. It formed more than ten thousand years ago, when a plateau glacier covered the mountains and tongues of ice descended from it through the valleys; as it retreated it exposed glacial cirques, moraines and more than twenty small lakes scattered across the range. The surrounding area has been protected since 1946 as a Sitio Natural de Interés Nacional (a national natural-heritage protection designation) and was declared a nature reserve in 1978; expanded in 2017, the Lago de Sanabria y Sierras Segundera y de Porto nature reserve today covers 32,302 hectares across Galende, Cobreros, Trefacio and Porto.
Nature
Protected as a Sitio Natural de Interés Nacional (a national natural-heritage protection designation) on 7 February 1946 and declared a nature reserve in 1978, it was expanded in 1990 from 368 to 22,365 hectares and again in 2017, to its current 32,302; it is home to more than fifteen hundred plant species and sphagnum peat bogs. Its origin goes back to the coldest phases of the Quaternary, when glaciers shaped the cirques, valleys and moraines preserved today. The lago de Sanabria, the largest of glacial origin on the Iberian Peninsula, covers 318.7 hectares and reaches a maximum depth of 53 metres, and shares its protected status with more than twenty small lakes scattered across the range. The reserve covers the municipal districts of Galende, Cobreros, Trefacio and Porto, ranging from the lake shore's 997 metres to the 2,127 metres of the Peña Trevinca peak.
Historical milestone
In the early hours of 9 January 1959, more than one hundred and fifty metres of the Vega de Tera dam collapsed and eight million cubic metres of water swept away the village: 144 of its 532 residents died. It is remembered as one of the most devastating dam-failure disasters in Spain's history, and it triggered a major movement of solidarity with the victims at national and international level. Eleven months later, on 2 December 1959, the Malpasset dam disaster occurred at Fréjus, France, with 421 deaths, and years later, in 1963, a landslide at Italy's Vajont dam caused a megatsunami that killed around 2,000 people.
Curiosity
According to the popular tale, a poor man who was Christ flooded the village after receiving alms only from some women who were kneading bread; its submerged bells ring on the night of San Juan for anyone with a clean soul.
Historical milestone
The monastery of San Martín resisted the reform that Carracedo embraced in 1203 and did not accept the observance of the Cistercian order until 1245; the disentailment suppressed it definitively in 1835.
Activity
Galende celebrates the Martyrs on 21 January, in the depths of the mountain winter, and San Mamés on 7 August; the saint gives his name to the parish church, of a single nave and with an altarpiece bearing his image.