Foncebadón

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Santa Colomba de Somoza municipality: Foncebadón
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Foncebadón (Spain)
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Basic data
Autonomous Community : Castile and Leon
Province : Leon
Comarca : Maragatería
Coordinates 42 ° 29 ′  N , 6 ° 17 ′  W Coordinates: 42 ° 29 ′  N , 6 ° 17 ′  W
Height : 1440  msnm
Residents : 13 (2011) INE
Postal code : 24722
Area code: 24152000300
administration
Mayor : Jesús Serafín Merino Tejedo
( PSOE , 2003)
Website : www.santacolombadesomoza.com

Foncebadón is a very small town on the Camino de Santiago in the province of León in the Autonomous Community of Castile and León , administratively it belongs to Santa Colomba de Somoza .

Ruins in place, April 2009

For a long time, the place was very important for the Camino de Santiago because of its location directly before the transition over the Monte Irago , the Puerto de Foncebadón with the Cruz de Ferro . It was first mentioned in the 10th century, at the latest in the 12th century the hermit Gaucelmo built a hospital and a hostel for pilgrims here: Alfonso VI. granted immunity to the Foncebadón hostel and the Church of San Salvador de Irago in a deed of 1103 at the request of Gaucelmos. In the Middle Ages, the Salvador Church, a hospice consecrated to St. John and the Church of St. Mary Magdalene belonging to the hospice are mentioned. Later a hermit community, dependent on Astorga , settled here , and at times there was also the post and dignity of the abbot of Foncebadón.

In the war of independence against the Napoleonic troops, the village was destroyed and then rebuilt.

At the latest with the rural exodus in Spain at the beginning of the second half of the twentieth century, the place suffered a dramatic loss of population, which finally ended with zero inhabitants and turned the place into a ghost village full of ruins in the 1980s. Against this backdrop, the Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho places the fight of the first-person narrator of his novel On the Camino de Santiago against a black dog, which symbolizes the demonic.

The renaissance of the Pilgrimage to St. James saved Foncebadón from total decay. Although only one resident lives in the village all year round (it is more animated in summer), in addition to a few private houses and the parish church of Santa Maria Magdalena, a small pilgrimage hostel and two guesthouses have also been built or rebuilt, as well as several restaurants. Modern water supply and disposal has been in place since 2005.

Leaving the village in the direction of Cruz de Ferro, one encounters the ruins of the Salvador Church.

literature

  • Míllan Bravo Lozano: Practical pilgrim guide. The Camino de Santiago. Editorial Everest, Léon 1994, ISBN 84-241-3835-X .

Web links

Muszla Jakuba.svg
Navigation bar St. James " Camino Francés "

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