Candelario is, without a doubt, a very, very beautiful village, with a well-preserved historic centre and streets that adjust to the shape of the hillside to create charming corners. This is enough reason to visit it, but it is also a town with a distinctive character and personality.
read more
Candelario is, without a doubt, a very, very beautiful village, with a well-preserved historic centre and streets that adjust to the shape of the hillside to create charming corners. This is enough reason to visit it, but it is also a town with a distinctive character and personality.
It seems to have an ancient origin, and it is said that its founders could have been shepherds from Asturias. It is also noted that there was a settlement of some importance here in Roman times, and the discovery of the head of the Roman god Janus carved in stone seems to support this theory.
But with or without the Romans, Candelario ended up developing a particular architecture and way of life, linked to the slaughtering of the pig and the manufacturing of cured meats. The houses have a courtyard for cutting and large balconies for drying. And since the animal was slaughtered in the middle of the street, the entries to the homes also have the traditional "batipuertas", a kind of half-height door that precedes the main door and it served as a security barrier for the slaughterer to finish off his work without danger. It was also useful to prevent loose cattle from entering the houses while the door of the house remained open for ventilation.
Notice, also, how in the streets there are what they call watering cans, “regaderas”: small channels that run through the town carrying water from mountain springs. Their function was not only to facilitate the watering of the vegetable gardens but also to clean the floor of the blood and waste left after the slaughter.
Here there are also outstanding buildings such as the town hall, the Ermita del Santo Cristo del Refugio and, above all, the Church of Nuestra Señora de la Asunción, a splendid temple with a mixture of styles including Romanesque, Mudejar, Gothic and Baroque.
But in addition to all this anthropological and architectural heritage, and to have appeared in a few films and television series, Candelario has brought a well-known saying to the Spanish language. It emerged a couple of centuries ago, in the sausage factory of the wealthy Constantino Rico. It turns out that one of the workers, tired of the commotion a dog was making, tied the animal up with the closest thing he had, which was a string of sausages. A boy saw the scene and told everyone that in the house of the wealthy Constantino, dogs were tied up with sausages, and this is how this expression was born, referring to exaggerating someone's economic condition.
