Ponferrada has an imposing Templar castle, the city's watchword. And a radio museum founded by Luis del Olmo, the city's favorite son. And others dedicated to the railway, energy or archeology of the area. And, furthermore, the bustle provided by the endless parade of pilgrims towards Santiago, who have the end of their stage here. But the city hides a lesser-known secret: part of its municipality is home to the Tebaida.
The name that groups around twenty towns in Bierzo refers to a landscape in Upper Egypt that, according to some classical authors such as the Augustinian monk Fernando Flórez, is very similar. We will have to give it the benefit of the doubt, taking into account that said African place is located in the heart of the Sudanese desert and this area of the Leonese interior is a botanical and humidity explosion. Be that as it may, the Thebaid is a secret that is being revealed little by little, since in 2015 it was nominated to be declared a world heritage site.
In this region, whose reference town – in addition to the capital of Bercia – is Peñalba de Santiago, is the Silencio Valley. And it is not an advertising slogan, but a place that is called that. The Tuerto and Aquiano peaks, in the Aquilanos mountains, are its stone lookouts.
The San Gennadio cave, a disturbing-looking opening in the limestone, is a place of worship. In fact, the area has traditionally been chosen by anchorites to get away from the madding crowd, as it is far from everything, despite its geographical proximity to important communication routes.
In La Tebaida you should also visit the Peñalba de Santiago church, one of the jewels of pre-Romanesque Mozarabic art in Spain. Standing since the year 937, it was part of a monastic complex of which few traces remain today. Experts highlight that it has two apses, and relate it to a certain influence of a heretical Christian sect known as the Circumceliones, followers of Donatism who roamed the shores of the Christian world and who came to proclaim themselves martyrs with mass suicides so as not to sin with the doctrine. official of the Church.
Even older, the sanctuary of San Pedro de los Montes was built in the middle of the 7th century, isolated in a beautiful clearing between forests. It would have been founded by Saint Fructuoso himself, who at that time was bishop of Braga and it became one of the most powerful monasteries in Bierzo at the time, when the Muslims still dominated more than half of the Iberian peninsula.
The visitor to La Tebaida does not live on architectural arguments alone, as he finds a semi-virgin territory for hiking and observing wild fauna, especially in the Silencio Valley, cataloged as an international space of biological interest, with good populations of birds such as the golden eagle or the already very rare Iberian gray partridge. There are some nice waterfalls and mills hidden in the forest that look like a drawing from a story.
Even with its isolation, La Tebaida is only 25 kilometers south of Ponferrada. Using the twisting roads LE-CV-191/21 and LE-158/4 takes 45 minutes by car.
