Banares

Bañares is a municipality in La Rioja, Spain. It is located in the region of Santo Domingo de la Calzada, about 45 km west of Logroño. It is located in the Rioja Alta and in the region of Santo Domingo de la Calzada.

Its economy is based mainly on agriculture. Especially in the cultivation of potatoes, cereals, beets and green beans.

History

The first references to the existence of the town of Bañares accredit its existence already in the year 1051: (Scemeno Munioz de Cerratón in his letter of a donation made to San Millán, siego Garsea king of Pamplona, it was 1089, puts Lope Enecores de Vaniares as witness).

In the year 1075 Don Sancho, King of Nájera and Queen Placencia donated the monastery of Santa María de Bañares to San Millán.

In the year 1079 Fortún Aznares de Bañares ordered his body to be buried in San Millán and that he also be given the palaces, necklaces and currencies that he owned in Bañares.

In the year 1133, King Alfonso the Battler, who ruled La Rioja, donated to Pedro, Archdeacon and rector of the church of El Salvador, all the estate that by royal decree touched the castle of Bilibio, along with all the estate of the King in the town of Banares.

In 1157, on the Valpierre plain, near Bañares, it was the scene of two battles between the troops of Sancho III of Castile and Sancho III of Navarre, as the latter had tried to take advantage of the death of Alfonso VII to conquer Castilian lands.

In the year 1167, Doña Urraca, the wife of Pedro González de Álava, donated a plot of land and two Collazos towns in Bañares to San Millán.

In the Middle Ages the town was part of the Junta de Valpierre.

Don Diego López de Haro tenth Lord of Vizcaya had Doña Toda López de Haro as a daughter who married Íñigo Ortiz, Lord of Estúñiga, Bañares and Alesanco.

Around 1200 Pedro Fernández de Villegas "el Primigenio", first lord of Villegas and other fiefs, was also lord of Bañares, and in 1212, he would become one of the heroes of the battle of Las Navas from Toulouse.

The town was the scene of bloody battles in the 12th and 13th centuries between the kingdoms of Navarre and Castile.

In the holm oak forest of Bañares, Enrique de Trastámara held a council in 1367 with Beltrán Caquín and other corporals of his army about to give Don Pedro the battle they lost in the fields of Nájera.

The López de Haro family, lords of Vizcaya and governors of La Rioja, resided in Bañares for a long time, but the heyday of the nearby city of Santo Domíngo de la Calzada contributed to the fact that many of its neighbors moved to this city.

In 1478, the title of Count of Bañares was granted to Álvaro de Zúñiga y Guzmán, owner of the castle, of which some ruins remain today, the town belonging to his lordship until the abolition of this jurisdictional system in 1811.

The friar Mateo Anguiano Nieva in his book of the year 1701 titled History Compendium of the province of La Rioja explained the life of San Formedio de Bañares, whose body was transferred to this locality and is found in the parish church of Santa Cruz. He talks about the municipality and distinguishes between Bañares County and Treviño County.

At a date between 1790 and 1801, Bañares joined the Royal Economic Society of La Rioja, which was one of the societies of friends of the country founded in the XVIII in accordance with the ideals of the illustration.

According to Ángel Casimiro de Govantes in his Diccionario Geográfico-histórico de La Rioja from 1846, Bañares had a hospital founded in 1387. He also mentions the existence of a castle in ruins, still existing today, which belonged to the Counts of Bañares. According to this author, he then produced grains, legumes and cattle. It also explains that in times prior to the date of writing this book, it produced wine, but that in that year its manufacture was in decline. For his part, Pascual Madoz in his Gographical-historical-statistical Dictionary of Spain and its Overseas possessions elaborated Between the years 1845 and 1850 it says about the town that it had then 161 houses, a town hall where the jail was located and a first letters school attended by 40 children of both sexes. It had an inn, taverns, two grocery stores, bread ovens, a granary, a church, a hermitage and three water fountains for domestic use by the neighbors. Mail was received from Santo Domingo de la Calzada three times a week. It produced a lot of wheat, barley, rye, legumes, vegetables and little wine. They had cattle, horses, mules, sheep, sheep, and goats. There was hunting for partridges, quails, rabbits and hares. Regarding its trade, grains were exported and oil, wine, chickpeas and other fruits were imported. Its population was 128 neighbors and 672 souls.

Demographics

The municipality, which has an area of 29.59 km², has 240 inhabitants and a density of 8.11 inhabitants/km² according to the municipal register for 2017 of the INE.

Graphic of demographic evolution of Bañares between 1842 and 2017

Population of law according to population censuses of the INE.Population according to the 2017 municipal register.

Administration

Mayors since the 1979 elections

Period	Name	Party
1979-1983	Ramón Palacios Palacios	UCD
1983-1987		PRP
1987-1991	Jesus Palacios Metola	AP
1991-1995	Andrés Palacios Palacios	P
1995-1999	Ma Ángeles del Val Gómez	P
1999-2003	Jaime Aparicio Guerrero	PSOE
2003-2007	Jaime Aparicio Guerrero	PSOE
2007-2011	Felix Andrés Gimilio Ortiz	PSOE
2011-2015	Antonio Santiago Ortiz de Landázuri Llamazares	PSOE
2015-2019	Antonio Santiago Ortiz de Landázuri Llamazares	PSOE
2019-	Antonio Santiago Ortiz de Landázuri Llamazares	PSOE

Economy

Evolution of outstanding debt

The concept of outstanding debt includes only debts with savings banks and banks related to financial credits, fixed-income securities and loans or credits transferred to third parties, excluding, therefore, commercial debt.

Graphic of evolution of the city council's living debt between 2008 and 2014

Living city council debt in thousands of Euros according to data from the Ministry of Finance and Ad. Public.

The outstanding municipal debt per inhabitant in 2014 amounted to €0.

Etymology

In a bull from 1199 granting privileges to the monastery of San Millán de la Cogolla, it appears named as Bannares, with the collective suffix -ar and the plural Mozarabic feminine -es. The place name refers to baths, generally used in Roman times.

Last Name

Bañares is also a surname native to Valgañón, with known branches in La Rioja, Madrid, the Basque Country, Catalonia, the Canary Islands, Argentina, Chile and the Philippines.

See https://web.archive.org/web/20121217015033/http://www.labscittec.es/valganon/APELLIDOS/banares.html. This surname comes from the town of Bañares. It comes from Juan, a resident of this town who in 1555 went to live in Valgañón, another town in La Rioja just over twenty kilometers away.

View of Bañares.

Tourism

Chapel of the Holy Cross.

Church of the Holy Cross.

Buildings and monuments

Hermitage of the Holy Cross or Santa María la Antigua

Old Romanesque-style parish church built around the 12th century.

When the new Church was built with the title of Santa Cruz, they called the other one Santa María la Antigua.

It was declared an Asset of Cultural Interest in the Monument category on April 9, 1964.

Santa Cruz Parish Church

Of Gothic construction. Construction begins around 1490 and ends around 1510.

Inside the church is the ark of San Formerio. It is one of the jewels of Spanish Romanesque art, scholars place it in the middle of the XII century. It is made of wood covered by enameled copper sheets with different motifs.

It was declared an Asset of Cultural Interest in the Monument category on April 9, 1964.

Bañares Castle

This castle is currently in ruins, as the stone was sold for construction. It is known that it had wide walls, a keep and a moat that defended it.

Currently, only the ruins of the castle of Bañares remain, located on the way out to Hervías, which allow us to reconstruct a rectangular plan, with access, facing east, on one of the longest sides, flanked by cylindrical cubes, which would also reinforce the angles of the rectangle. The walls were very thick and sloped. Inside, was the keep, attached to the south panel. Rectangular in plan, it was built in masonry in the beams and with internal solid masonry and rubble, reaching approximately 3.5 m thick. The interior space of this tower is divided longitudinally (E-W) into two naves, by means of two semicircular arches that support a square pillar in the center and corbels on the eastern and western walls.

Parties

• The third weekend of August, the festivals are held in honor of San Formerio. They integrate religious acts, encierros, rock concerts and a multitude of food celebrated the last day in the beautiful park of La Salceda.
• The last Sunday of July is celebrated the day in honor of the Virgin of La Antigua.

Their Patron Saint Festivities were celebrated at the end of September, after the agricultural harvest. They are in honor of San Formerio, patron saint of the town.

The main attraction of these festivities are their processions that begin with Thanksgiving Day, celebrated on September 14, and later the patron saint festivities celebrated on the 24th and 25th of that same month. Currently the patron saint festivities have been moved to the third weekend of August, but Gracias is still celebrated on September 25.

Every day of the festivities a procession is held, where the young people lead the patron saint in dance through various streets of the town.

In the old days, when there were more people in the town, among the groups of young people, always boys, they would compete among themselves to see who would be the group that would dance that year, always first having asked the Mayor for permission. Now it is different, there is no youth left and those responsible for teaching future dancers have great difficulties finding young people to do it, even women have had to do it due to a lack of men.

The first two days the dances are done with castanets, the dancers are nine eight dressed in a similar way and the Cachirulo or Cachiburrio something different. The main clothing is a white shirt and pants with a red sash, colored ribbons crossed to the body fastened with the sash, elbow pads with colored ribbons and the castanets also sewn with colored ribbons. And on the shoulders a brightly colored shawl. The footwear were white esparto espadrilles, with colored ties.

In the dances with castanets there are two rhythms, one the normal one that is danced throughout the procession and another that is performed a few meters before entering the church that is danced at great speed in a short stretch of space since the dancers They take short and very quick steps, this is done by making a corridor while the Saint and the delegation of authorities enter the church.

On the second day of the festivities, the dances are performed with sticks, they are called Troqueados. There are several dances, the most picturesque being the so-called Swords and the Trades. In the first, a kind of combat is carried out between two dancers, and later they all enter the battle, which ends without a winner or loser. In the one of the Trades, as its own name indicates, it is a dance in which everyone participates and in turn each one performs a different trade, such as tailor, shoemaker, blacksmith, violinist, flycatcher, etc.

Parallel to all this paraphernalia of popular culture, there is another no less populist one that was only celebrated in that area. It was about going to hang around the newlyweds, when they came from the honeymoon. It was only done once to each couple and that act was called “Ask for the Rebollo”. At night when they went to bed, the gang of friends and acquaintances went around singing at the door of the house of the newlyweds and they later entertained their friends with liquors and pasta until the wee hours of the morning.

The most well-known songs with which the newlyweds were surrounded are these:

Looks like I'm seeing you,

Get down the stairs

with the bottle in the hand

and the other the cookies.

To these newlyweds

We're here to round them.

and to congratulate them

with all cordiality.

To these newlyweds,

We wish you a fortune.

and about the nine months

Have a child in the crib.

Gastronomy

He makes extensive use of garden products, an example of which is the vegetable stew (called Menestra riojana), potatoes with chorizo, potatoes with meat, and piquillo peppers. The meats are also excellent, being good exponents the local chorizo, black pudding and chops al vine shoot taking advantage of the wood resulting from the pruning of the abundant vineyards in the area.

Sports facilities

La Salceda municipal pediment, swimming pools and soccer field. There is also a cycle route that runs along the old railway line included in the catalog of greenways.