Valdunciel Causeway

Calzada de Valdunciel is a Spanish municipality and town in the province of Salamanca, in the autonomous community of Castilla y León. It is integrated within the region of La Armuña. It belongs to the judicial district of Salamanca.

Its municipal area is made up of a single population center, it occupies a total area of 20.03 km² and according to the demographic data collected in the municipal register prepared by the INE in 2017, it has a population of 666 inhabitants.

The Good Fountain, of Roman origin, reuses a high-imperial anthropomorph in its vessel.

Miliario seccionado next to the Valdunciel creek, where the Via de la Plata passed, about 14 km north of Salamanca.

Geography

The town of Calzada de Valdunciel is located 13 km from Salamanca capital, at an altitude of 801 meters above sea level, with an area of 20.3 km². This municipality has a population of 642 inhabitants (2009). Miñano (1828) says of the town: "situated on a plain that bathes a stream from the north that through a spacious meadow goes down to Forfoleda and enters the Cañedo. It is on the road that leads from Salamanca to Zamora. It abounds with good waters. It produces grains, legumes, cattle and firewood". Calzada belongs to the old quarter of Armuña, a Salamanca region renowned for its extensive cereal fields, tasty chickpeas and wide horizons.

Its geographical situation makes Calzada de Valdunciel a place of passage and transition. From Salamanca, the road to Zamora and Léon enters through the extensions of Armuño, crossing a landscape rich in resonances of Unamuno ("Oh clara carretera de Zamora, happy dreamer of my habit"). Calzada is the last town before leaving the province and Armuña following the N-630.

Calzada has, at least as regards the road that gives it its name, a history of thousands of years, from the protohistoric populations, passing through the Vacceos and Romans up to the present day.

The traditional name of Roman roads has been calzada and this municipality is no exception: the Iter ab Emerita Asturicam used to pass through here, better known as Vía de la Silver or Silver Route. This important structuring axis connected Mérida with Astorga and its mining environment.

History

Although the Roman remains indicate the existence of settlement in Roman times, or at least, of a human movement in the term favored by the passage of the Vía de la Plata through it, the foundation of the current Calzada de Valdunciel seems fit within the repopulation process carried out by the kings of León in the Middle Ages. At this time the town was integrated into the quarter of Armuña of the jurisdiction of Salamanca, within the Kingdom of León, being called "Calçada", a name that derives precisely from the passage of the Calzada de la Plata through the town. With the creation of the current provinces in 1833, it was framed in the province of Salamanca, within the Leonese Region.

Demographics

Consistorial house.

Graphic of demographic evolution of Calzada de Valdunciel between 1900 and 2022

Source: Spanish National Statistical Institute - Graphical development by Wikipedia.

Monuments and places of interest

Good Font

Calzada preserves a Roman funerary monument, the parapet of the so-called Fuente Buena, at the exit to Valdunciel. It is a granite stela with an interesting carved motif: a reclining half-length female figure, her right hand resting under her breast and the other clutching a libation vessel, perhaps mead. The ends of the epigraph and the upper finial are cut, probably to adapt the stela to its function as a curb.

Pontoons

Among its monuments there are also the so-called Pontoons which, according to some authors, are fragments without epigraphy of Roman milestones. Other pieces of these pontoons, which served as footbridges for the La Vega stream, come from the clearing of a nearby hermitage.

Santa Elena Parish Church

The parish church of Santa Elena corresponds as a whole to the 16th century. It has a single nave, with a simple gabled wooden frame over large transverse arches, an altarpiece from the 18th century in the tradition of Churriguera, and a gallery at the foot on lowered arches and Italic columns. The main doorway, on the south flank, and the window of the main chapel were redone around the year 1720. Interesting remains of what must have been the previous church, which would be Romanesque from the 17th century XII.

Administration and politics

Municipal elections

Transportation

The municipality is well connected both with the capital Salamanca and with the rest of the country since it has a shared exit with the neighboring Valdunciel terminus of the Ruta de la Plata highway that connects Gijón with Seville and allows you to go to both Zamora as to the aforementioned provincial capital.