Craftsmanship and rural life
The province of Salamanca treasures ancestral trades and traditions that have given rise to beautiful pieces of craftwork.
Metalsmiths and jewellers use precious metals to master the interlacing of the renowned Salamancan filigree in the provincial capital city of Salamanca, as well as in other municipalities all through the province, such as Ciudad Rodrigo, Mogarraz, San Martín del Castañar or Tamames. Crafted stonemasons, successors of those who helped decorate temples and palaces in the past, now work on sandstone in Villamayor as well as on granite in Sorihuela and Los Santos.
The humble clay in Alba de Tormes, Cespedosa or El Bodón is then transformed by potters and ceramists in domestic utensils and real works of art that anyone can afford nowadays. Villoruela then becomes the focus of wicker production, while La Alberca and Mogarraz carefully work the wood, and Montemayor del Río masters chestnut basketmaking.
Cotton and wool furnish the sewing craftsmanship of El Bodón and Morasverdes, allowing for the manufacturing of flashy embroidery in Sierra de Francia mountains. Livestock vocation in the province fosters the existence of expert leather workers and shoemakers in Macotera, Salamanca, Villavieja de Yeltes, Ciudad Rodrigo, Béjar and Mogarraz.
All of these are examples of the master artisans’ good deeds, whose labour enriches the culture and originality of this land.
The Stonework Museum
The exhibition is distributed on three floors which show the process of the granite, from its creation in the inner depths of the Earth to the end, when it is used in the building processes.
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House-museum of Gabriel y Galán in Frades de la Sierra
José María Gabriel y Galán (1870-1905), son of a humble rural family, was a poet in love with the Salamancan and Extremaduran lands, who escaped modernism in search of rather traditional values such as family, tradition, Catholicism and countryside life.
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Transhumance theme area in Los Santos
Shepherds' and particularly transhumant shepherds' life is detailed in several interpretive display panels located in the access to the chapel of Nuestra Señora del Gozo, next to the bull ring of the municipality.
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Theme park of popular buildings in Trabanca
The region of Bajo Tormes, linked to the area of the Arribes del Duero in the municipality of Trabanca, has great ethnographic wealth. There are a large number of different auxiliary buildings such as bothies, chivitero goat pens and tenada sheep huts.
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Granite theme park and surroundings of the Rollo Canalizo rock in Los Santos
tenada sheep hut hosts several explanatory panels on stonework history, the construction of Roman roads and the modern industry of granite quarrying, together with a small collection of tools.
Traditional farming house in Galindo y Perahuy
The pens and tenadas (huts to shelter flocks of sheep during the night) adjacent to a modern restaurant host a major collection of ethnographic objects placed in context.