Village
San Cebrián de Castro is a municipality in the comarca of Tierra del Pan, in the province of Zamora, next to the Ruta de la Plata, with 250 inhabitants (INE 2025). Its hamlet of Fontanillas de Castro sits on a dehesa from which one overlooks the plain that descends towards the Esla reservoir, territory that formerly belonged to the seigneury of Castrotorafe. In Roman times the town of Vicus Acuarius stood here, mentioned in the itinerary of Antoninus Pius and crossed by the Calzada de la Plata. Next to the N-630 national road, the ruins of the fortress of Castrotorafe are preserved, raised in the 11th century on the banks of the Esla. The municipal area, of flat relief, preserves a rich fauna, with birds such as the white stork and mammals such as the deer.
Monument
An abandoned medieval town on a meander of the Esla, with stretches of wall, a gate and the castle in ruins; it was declared a monument by decree of 3 June 1931 and today it is one of the great abandoned settlements of Castile.
Historical milestone
Alfonso VII granted in 1129 the fuero of Zamora to the town, raised over an earlier settlement; with it was born a frontier settlement meant to control the Esla crossing between León, Castile, Galicia and Portugal.
Historical milestone
Half a century after its foundation the villa was handed over to the Order of Santiago, which kept it as a commandery and seat until 1493; from that period comes the Santiago coat of arms still seen in the comarca.
Monument
The villa owed its importance to possessing one of the few stable crossings of the Esla, a fundamental link between Castile and Galicia in the Middle Ages; the control of that bridge explains its wall and its castle.
Curiosity
The origin of the settlement is usually identified with this stop on the Roman road between Emerita and Asturica, the Vía de la Plata, which crossed the municipal district before the medieval town was raised over it.
Monument
It was decided in 1838 to rebuild it over a ruined Renaissance church and the works went on from 1841 to 1887; it displays on the façade the coat of arms of the Order of Santiago and keeps a sixteenth-century altarpiece.
Monument
Among the goods of the parish of San Cebrián a Romanesque Marian carving stands out that preserves its polychromy, a piece surviving from the church that preceded the nineteenth-century rebuilding of the building.
Activity
On Whit Monday the village goes down in pilgrimage to the ruins of Castrotorafe, beside the Esla, in the most notable festival of the year; the dedication recalls the crown-land status of these lands.
Curiosity
Casilla de Flores, Rascollobos and Los Cascajales preserve prehistoric remains of substance which, together with the Roman villa nearby, document a continuous occupation of the valley of the Esla from very ancient times.
Activity
On 16 September the village honours with mass and procession the saint from whom it takes its name, San Cebrián or Cipriano, closing a calendar that begins with San Antón and passes through the Santa Cruz of May.
Activity
On 3 May the Santa Cruz, on the 9th San Gregorio and on the 15th San Isidro chain together in the village the festivals linked to the farming cycle, when the cereal fields are blessed before the harvest.
Nature
The river traces here a meander set between slopes of scrubland on which Castrotorafe sits; its groves of ash and poplar are among the best preserved stretches of the lower course of the Zamoran Esla.
Monument
The fortress was raised in slate masonry bonded with mortar and organises two enclosures of trapezoidal plan; the outer one preserves drum towers at the corners, later reformed for the use of artillery.
Monument
Of the castle there are preserved and consolidated the main gate with drawbridge, the keep, the Torre de San Juan, a false postern and the well, as well as granaries, kitchens, cellars, stables and wall-walks.
Monument
The high altarpiece of the parish church, of three bays and two storeys, follows a model of the end of the 16th century attributed to Cristóbal de Acosta and is topped with a relief of the battle of Clavijo.
Monument
The church of the Inmaculada Concepción of Fontanillas holds altarpieces begun in 1762 by the sculptor Francisco Fernández, of Medina de Rioseco, with declamatory figures and clear influence of Gregorio Fernández.
Monument
The village preserves several houses with a coat of arms: one in the square with a circular blazon of the end of the 18th century, another in the north street dated 1766 and a third with a royal coat of arms of 1770, next to the remains of a hospital.
Historical milestone
The church, of Renaissance design, was rebuilt between 1838 and 1887 with works begun in 1841: a single nave of three bays with a barrel vault and lunettes, a choir with a dome on pendentives and a façade with a curved pediment and a cross of Santiago.
Historical milestone
During the Castilian war of succession the Portuguese army took the town in 1475 in support of Juana la Beltraneja, and Ferdinand the Catholic raised the siege; Alfonso de Palencia afterwards directed the last repairs of the enclosure.
Curiosity
In 1815 the last mayor of the town, Antonio Entrecanales, was already living in San Cebrián: the transfer of residents, begun after the plagues of the 16th century, had left the walled enclosure practically empty.
Curiosity
In 2004 a master plan was completed with an architectural and archaeological study of the complex, which occupies 4,709 meters of extension; the castle had been protected by the castles decree of April 1949.
Curiosity
Approved on 25 March 1999, the municipal coat of arms shows a castle argent masoned sable over waves azure and argent, with a cross of Santiago gules and a sheaf of wheat vert.
Nature
In the ponds and banks of the municipal district there have been recorded the natterjack toad, the spadefoot toad, the common frog, the Iberian newt and the palmate newt, along with reptiles such as the ocellated lizard and the Montpellier snake.
Nature
The Esla marks the western boundary of the municipal district and forms here the Ricobayo reservoir; over its waters and fields fly the white stork, the spoonbill, the hen harrier, the barn owl and the common starling.
Nature
The dehesa on which Fontanillas sits and the woods of the municipal district give shelter to the red deer, the common genet, the European hedgehog, the Iberian hare, the rabbit and the fox, in a flat relief between 680 and 772 metres.
Activity
Fontanillas de Castro celebrates the Inmaculada Concepción on 8 December in a festivity that the residents know as La Morcillona, the winter event of a hamlet of around eighty inhabitants.
Activity
Every 5 August Fontanillas de Castro celebrates the Fiesta del Turista, dedicated to those who return to the village in summer; in the municipality the Castrotorafe cultural association publishes twice a year the magazine La Esquina del Balcón.