Village
Roales del Pan is a municipality in the Zamora comarca of Tierra del Pan, six kilometres from the provincial capital, with around 1,020 inhabitants. It arose from the resettlement carried out by the kings of León along the Duero line between the 10th and 12th centuries, and always remained crown land, with properties farmed under lease by labourers from Valcabado for various ecclesiastical institutions of Salamanca, Toro and Zamora. Between the mid-19th century and the 1920s it came to be part of the municipality of La Hiniesta, before regaining its independence. It is today a communications hub, crossed from north to south by the N-630 road and the Ruta de la Plata motorway, after the closure of the old railway that had a stop in the village. Of its church of the Asunción, rebuilt in 1971, only the 16th-century south doorway remains, and inside it holds a 16th-century Christ and a 17th-century silver parish cross.
Monument
Of the church of Nuestra Señora de la Asunción, rebuilt between 1971 and 1972, only the southern doorway of the sixteenth century was preserved, framed by an alfiz of Mudéjar tradition carved at the end of that century.
Monument
The main altarpiece of the parish church of Roales is an eighteenth-century work with Solomonic columns wrapped in vines, the Baroque model that prevailed in the rural churches of the Tierra del Pan.
Curiosity
The church keeps a seventeenth-century silver processional cross, as well as an image of San Sebastián and a Christ of the sixteenth, pieces that survived the rebuilding of the church in the seventies.
Historical milestone
Roales arose from the repopulations that the kings of León promoted along the Duero line during the 9th and 10th centuries, and it always remained a crown domain within the jurisdiction of the Tierra del Pan, without ecclesiastical or noble lordship.
Activity
On 20 January the local patron is celebrated with a procession in the middle of winter; the calendar is completed by San Isidro on 15 May and by the Asunción on 15 August, titular of the parish.
Curiosity
With somewhat more than a thousand inhabitants and only six kilometres by road from Zamora, it is the municipality closest to the provincial capital, which has slowed here the depopulation that is emptying the comarca.
Activity
The stage of the Camino de Santiago that joins Zamora with Montamarta runs through these fields, a flat stretch of some eighteen kilometres along consolidation tracks on which the pilgrims cross the Tierra del Pan.
Curiosity
More than nine hundred dovecotes have been catalogued in the province, most of them circular and built with adobe or rammed earth and facing south; the raising of pigeons was a supplementary income for the farmer.
Food and drink
The Tierra del Pan owes its name to the cereal that supplied Zamora with wheat, and still today the milling of these fields supplies the ovens that knead the pan candeal and the thick-crusted round loaves of the province.
Food and drink
The churra and castellana sheep that graze the stubble after the harvest give the milk of the protected designation of origin Queso Zamorano, of pressed paste, with a rind patterned by the esparto band and long curing.
Monument
The parish church holds a Christ carved in the 16th century and an image of San Sebastián of the 17th, patron of the festivity that the village celebrates every 20 January; the high altar of the church was restored in the summer of 2008.
Monument
Among the pieces preserved from the old church figure a carving of San Antonio Abad of the 16th century and a crucifix of the beginning of the 17th that is kept in the sacristy of the parish church.
Historical milestone
The church of Nuestra Señora de la Asunción was rebuilt between 1971 and 1972, preserving from the earlier building the southern doorway of the 16th century and the images that today occupy its altars.
Historical milestone
From the middle of the 19th century until the twenties Roales formed part of the municipality of La Hiniesta; it was segregated around the census of 1930 and since then constitutes a town council of its own within the Tierra del Pan.
Curiosity
Although the place remained royal land within the Tierra del Pan, a good part of its lands belonged to convents of Salamanca, Toro and Zamora, which exploited them until the disentailments of the 19th century.
Curiosity
With 1,019 inhabitants in only 10.78 square kilometres, the municipality reaches 94.53 inhabitants per square kilometre, an exceptional density in a province that barely exceeds seventeen.
Activity
On 15 May the village brings out San Isidro Labrador in procession, prays the rosary and blesses the fields; on 15 August it celebrates Nuestra Señora de la Asunción, titular of the parish.
Activity
At the beginning of August the municipality programmes its Verano Cultural, with activities that take advantage of the closeness to the provincial capital to attract the residents who return to the village during the holidays.
Nature
The municipal district is predominantly flat, with a single small elevation to the west; the urban centre sits at 695 metres and the municipality reaches 698, only six kilometres from the city of Zamora.
Nature
The N-630 road crosses the municipal district from north to south and the Ruta de la Plata motorway, from Gijón to Seville, passes next to the village, which lies less than a kilometre from the junction with the Duero motorway.