Village
San Pedro de la Nave-Almendra is a municipality of 313 inhabitants formed by the villages of Almendra, El Campillo and Valdeperdices, in the Zamora Tierra del Pan. The Visigothic church of San Pedro de la Nave, from the 7th century, served as a hostel for pilgrims and later became a priory dependent on Celanova; around it a seigneury of the Order of Saint Benedict was organised, with boat and fishing rights over the Esla. In 1933 the construction of the Ricobayo reservoir flooded the communications between the settlements of the former municipality, which was reduced to these three villages; the Visigothic church, one of the greatest examples of Visigothic architecture, was then moved stone by stone to El Campillo.
Monument
A church raised between 680 and 711, in the last years of the Visigothic kingdom, with a Greek-cross plan enlarged with side aisles and some 16.8 by 11.2 metres; its yellow sandstone ashlar is laid dry, without mortar.
Monument
In the crossing of San Pedro de la Nave two historiated capitals represent Daniel in the lions' den and the sacrifice of Abraham, with the figures identified by inscriptions: they are the summit of surviving Visigothic sculpture.
Monument
Beneath the capitals runs a continuous frieze with scrollwork, birds, bunches of grapes and geometric motifs, and the openings are closed with horseshoe arches in the Visigothic manner, still without Islamic influence, carved in the seventh century.
Historical milestone
Six years after Manuel Gómez-Moreno made the church known in 1906, the State declared it a Monumento Nacional (Spain's heritage designation in force until 1931); that protection was what forced its rescue when the reservoir that was going to flood its site was planned.
Historical milestone
The architect Alejandro Ferrant Vázquez dismantled between 1930 and 1932 the church ashlar by ashlar on the Esla plain and raised it again at El Campillo, the nearest village, before the waters of the Ricobayo covered the original site.
Curiosity
In 1906 the historian from Granada recognised in that lost hermitage beside the river one of the very few Visigothic churches preserved standing; his description changed what was known of Hispanic art before the year 711.
Curiosity
On an ashlar inside San Pedro de la Nave an incomplete tabular clock is preserved engraved in the stone, with the canonical hours, one of the details that betray the monastic use of the building in the Early Middle Ages.
Historical milestone
Since the 7th century, when San Pedro de la Nave was founded, the life of present-day Valdeperdices appears tied to that monastery, which was not just a parish but a monastic community; the hamlet grew up within its lands, on the bank of the Esla.
Nature
The reservoir of the Esla, brought into operation on 4 February 1935 and with 1,145 cubic hectometres of capacity, submerged the plain where the Visigothic church stood and drew the jagged shores that today border the municipality.
Curiosity
The smallest of the four villages of the municipality, with barely thirty registered inhabitants, has guarded since 1932 the most complete Visigothic church in Spain, planted beside its square.
Activity
In mid-August, Almendra, El Campillo and Valdeperdices come together for a shared day in the countryside, one of the few occasions that gather the residents of the three settlements and the emigrants who return in summer.
Food and drink
A tradition preserved in Valdeperdices: great boughs are put together with anise bread, buns, apples and grapes that are symbolically auctioned at the church door on the day of the Ofertorio, the last Sunday of September.
Activity
On 22 September El Campillo honours San Mateo and on the last Sunday of the month Valdeperdices holds its Ofertorio, with an auction of flowers for the village's sponsors, closing the municipality's festive calendar.
Food and drink
The buns flavoured with anise that are hung from the Ramo del Ofertorio are still kneaded at home for the feast, alongside ring doughnuts and fruit of the last harvest, and are handed out after the symbolic bidding.
Activity
At the end of September the village celebrates its patroness with open-air dances and with the auction of flowers destined for the locality's sponsors, a form of neighbourly funding of the festival that remains alive.
Historical milestone
Tradition places the founding of the church of San Pedro de la Nave in the reign of Égica, between 687 and 702; it was thus built in the three decades before the Muslim conquest, which makes it one of the last works of Visigothic architecture.
Monument
Raised in stone and slate, the church of Almendra holds an interesting Gothic crucifix of the 14th and 15th centuries, the piece of greatest artistic value of this locality of the municipality.
Monument
The church of the Asunción de la Virgen, in Valdeperdices, preserves a parish cross of flat metal dated between the 13th and 14th centuries, one of the oldest pieces of metalwork in the comarca.
Monument
The bridges that cross the reservoir joined again some villages that the waters had separated; their construction was the answer to the isolation that forced the reordering of the municipality in the thirties.
Monument
At this place of the municipal district there appeared remains of the Roman early imperial period, proof that the valley was occupied centuries before the Visigothic church that made the municipality famous was raised.
Curiosity
The Visigothic church measures some 16.80 by 11.20 metres: a Greek cross plan to which side naves were afterwards added, with projecting chapels and an apse with a rectangular end wall.
Historical milestone
Alejandro Ferrant Vázquez directed between 1930 and 1932 the dismantling and transfer of the church from the bank of the Esla, an operation pioneering in Spain to save a monument from the waters of a reservoir.
Historical milestone
Alfonso III of León donated Valdeperdices to the church in the year 907; already in the 13th century the bishops granted fueros to these places to encourage a repopulation that was hard to fix in the Esla valley.
Historical milestone
The construction of the Ricobayo reservoir forced in 1933 the remaking of the municipality: the old San Pedro de la Nave and La Pueblica disappeared, and the affected residents were rehoused in the villages that form it today.
Curiosity
Together with the old San Pedro de la Nave, the place of La Pueblica disappeared beneath the waters; from that emptying comes the fall in population of the municipality, which went from 1,168 households in 1930 to 313 in 2025.
Curiosity
The builder Gregorio Prieto Gato carried out in the thirties the material transfer of the church to El Campillo, ashlar by ashlar, to prevent it from being submerged beneath the Ricobayo reservoir.
Curiosity
Built between the years 680 and 711, the church also served as lodging for pilgrims next to a ford of the Esla; it is one of the last works of Visigothic art before the Muslim conquest.
Activity
On Christmas Eve the residents of Valdeperdices perform the Pastorada and the Cordera, two popular Christmas plays in which the shepherds adore the Child before midnight mass; on the last Sunday of September the village celebrates its Ofertorio.
Activity
On 3 May El Campillo celebrates the Santa Cruz with the blessing of the loaves, that is, of the sown fields; on 9 May Almendra and El Campillo honour San Gregorio and on 22 September San Mateo is celebrated.
Nature
The shores of the reservoir are cut into rocky slate escarpments that give the municipal district its most characteristic profile, over 22.71 square kilometres situated at 712 metres of altitude.