Greetings !

We are a six person group, and we are going to introduce ourselves:
From left to right, we are:
-Isidro Femenía Gómez.
-Andrea Ares Solana.
-Raquel Díez González.
-Alicia del Barco Ortiz.
-Sonia Garrido Modesto.
-Ana Lis Galán Da Costa.

We are studying English Philology at the University of León, but some of us (Isidro, Andrea) come from Ponferrada, a 70.000 inhabitant town that is about 100 kilometers from here.
We hope you like our Blog, which is going to have some interesting things about customs, gastronomy, and so on and so forth.

See you soon !

Staff from The Ronchitos.

Gastronomy of el Bierzo and León.

  As the title says, we are going to talk about typical food, beginning with León's.

  Morcilla leonesa, that's 'Black pudding' in England, is made of a mixture of blood, onion, rice, bread crumb and pig's fat. It is stuffed in pig's guts. It can be eaten fried, boiled, with bread, chips or even fried eggs. This food looks awful ! We are uploading an image about it, and you will see it.

As you see, this is an image of fried eggs with a little bit of Black Pudding.












 
  Secondly, we have the "Ronchito", which is a typical sweet from León. Many years ago, the Santos Factory had the idea of creating a unique candy from León. It is made of peanut, cocoa and sugar. The name comes from the Spanish verb "ronchar", which means 'to crush like flour mill'. The "ronchito" is only distributed in León, so if you want to buy this sweet, you have to come here and buy it - or making someone bring it to you -.

We recommend it to you! It's really delicious!

 Then, we have the Cecina, that's 'Cured meat' , which is dried cow meat. It has a toasted colour, with a characteristic, salty flavour. It was catalogued as Protected Geographic Indication in 1.994. It's basically eaten in León and Zamora.

Here is a picture of the cured meat.












  
  Now, in third place, we are going to show you the Hojaldres de Astorga (Astorga's Puff Pastry), which, as the name says, are made in a town that's about 50 kilometres from León. They are made by mixing a 600 gram puff pastry roll with half a litre of water, 750 grams of sugar, 3 honey spoonfuls and some lemon drops. With this recipe, you will be able to do about 15 of them, so they have a huge amount of sugar, and because of that, they are not recommended to eat if you are on a diet ! They look very good, sticky and tasty because of the honey and the rest of ingredients. That's a pity we can't eat them very often.

These puff pastries look very mouthwatering, right?











  We are going a little further and we arrive to el Bierzo, a region located near Astorga. There are many traditional foods like the Pimientos de el Bierzo, Pulpo a la Gallega and Botillo de el Bierzo, and we are going to talk about the last one of them.

  It is the most known of the typical foods of el Bierzo. It might be because of its antiquity - it comes up in the pre-Roman's time - , but we don't know it exactly. It's made with some pig parts, and the only thing you have to do to prepare it is boiling it for approximately two hours - depending on its size - . Then, it has to be taken out and it will be ready to eat. It is recommended to accompany it with boiled potatoes and vegetables and, if you like wine, a red one is a perfect match to have with this food.

As said before, it is accompanied by some boiled potatoes and vegetables.













  These are some examples of typical food around here. What about yours ?

Monuments from León.

  In this entry, we are going to talk about some of the most popular monuments amongst the ones of this province, which you may like to visit if you come here some time.
 
  We are beginning our journey here, in the Cathedral of León, also known as Pulchra Leonina. It took 94 years to build it - from 1205 to 1301 - in a gothic style, and it is influenced by the Cathedral of Reims, located in France. The León Cathedral, dedicated to Santa María de la Regla, was declared of Cultural Interest in 1844.

  The Cathedral is well-known for its magnificent doors:
The central door is called ``Puerta de la Virgen Blanca´´ (White Virgin´s door) , dedicated to the Judgement Day and in which appears the Virgin Mary, Saint John and Jesus, above the judgement of the condemned and the blessed.
Between the two doors, the White Virgin and Jesus turn up.

The North door shows the Cycle of Jesus Nativity. It´s also called ``Puerta de San Juan´´ (Saint John's Door).
The South door,  ``Puerta de San Francisco´´ (Saint Francis door), is entirely dedicated to the Virgin.
Aside, there are other doors, such as the Saint Froilan door, with scenes of  Saint Froilan´s life; Death´s door, which remained unfinished; and the door of the Virgin of the Dice, the only one that preserves its original colour.

Its almost 1,800 square meters of stained glass windows are one of the main touristic attractions of the cathedral. The great majority of them are original - which is a rarity - and date from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century. They are one of the world's finest stained glass works.

The next stop in our journey is the “Basílica de San Isidoro”, a church in Romanesque style.

It is well-known not only because of the paintings it has on the ceilings of the Royal family vault, but also because of the wonderful capitals it houses in its cloister.

The building was made in a pure Romanesque style between the eleventh and twelfth centuries. In its origin, it was rededicated to Saint Isidore of Seville, the archbishop of Seville and the most famous academic and theologian of the Visigothic Spain - before the invasion of the Arab -. It shows the typical characteristics of a Romanesque church. Its walls are wide, and few windows are small. It also has some sculpture: the carved tympanum of the "Puerta del Cordero" is one of the basilica's most notable features. Created prior to 1100, this Romanesque tympanum depicts the Sacrifice of Abraham's black lines.
  The paintings have the classic features of the style, as well as flat figures and bright colours. The importance of these anonymous paintings made the Royal Pantheon worthy to be called the Romanesque Sistine Chapel.

  We are moving to the next building! It belongs to one of the most famous Modernist architects all over the world, Antoni Gaudí, which is "La Casa de los Botines". It's placed in the center of the town, near the cathedral of "San Isidoro" , and beside the "Palacio de los Guzmanes" (The actual deputation of León).

As we said before, the building was created in a Modernist style. It mixes the newest materials of the time with handicrafts, such as forge.
It is built in limestone and it has four towers in the corners. Gaudí wanted to mix the styles of other monuments in León, so he tried to give it a Gothic resemblance by using the pointed arches of the windows.

We can find a statue of Gaudí facing his work, making it stare at the monument.

However, "La Casa de los Botines" is not the only construction of Gaudí: 46 kilometers from León, we find the village of Astorga, where we find the "Episcopal Palace". It has curve lines that make it seem a castle that has been taken out of a fairy tale.

It does seem that is taken out of a fairy tale, huh?

These two buildings added up to another one in Santander, which is called the "Capricho", are the only buildings which Gaudí designs out of Catalonia.
Here you are a video in which you can contemplate some of Gaudí's architecture. It is really fascinating!

Gaudí's Architecture

Eventually, we are going to travel to Ponferrada, which is located 100 kilometers of León - and it's the town where two of us were born - in order to be astonished at the most important monument of León: the "Castillo de los Templarios" (Templar Castle).

It's sited in the confluence of the rivers "Sil" and "Boeza", the most important rivers of the town.

The castle, which was built over the ruins of an old Roman camp, was renovated in 1340 by Pedro Fernández de Castro, who added some towers for making it bigger and saffer.

For the following centuries, it was owned by several members of nobility, and in 1850, their walls and land were sold.

Due to this, in the walls were edificate public stables and a market until 1924, when it was appointed National Monument. In 1996 started their final restoration.

These are photos that have been taken inside the castle once restored . It is beautiful, isn't it? 

In this link, you will be able to observe more information about the castle:

Extra information about the 'Castillo de los Templarios'

It's an obliged stop if you pretend to make the famous "Camino de Santiago" !

How is Spain and how other countries considerate us.

What we are going to show here is a composition made by French pupils, in which they put forward the idea they have of Spain.

This is the first photo, that says: ''The word Spain makes me think about flamenco, beaches and the red and yellow flag''.

As Spanish people, we think that not all the people in the whole country like flamenco (To set an example, we don´t like flamenco). Flamenco is mostly typical in the southern zone of Spain, that is Andalucía, but in the northern one it's not at all.

Secondly, it's true that our beaches are better than some other countries ones (that´s why every summer it gets very crowded), but what they say about the flag is not so true, as it represents our country, but not all the Spanish people feel proud of the flag or even of Spain.

This one says: ''The word Spain makes me think of the beach, the heat, peppers, and Fútbol Club Barcelona. I think that the Spanish football is high-level. I think that in Spain the weather is always hot and sunny.

Our football is good because millions and millions of euros are inverted in this sport. Here, football is the 'deporte rey', this is, the sport that gathers most interest of all. Unfortunately, there are some underrated sports that are much better than football. Actually, when you are a child, you play football with your friends, but is uncommon to see children playing handball, basketball, hockey, or baseball. It would be very nice if all sports were treated equally.

To continue, the fact that the Spanish weather is always hot is totally false.

It's indeed hot and sunny in Spain, but in most of the areas, it's this way only on summer - except for the Canary Islands, which have a subtropical weather, and they are hot the whole year - , and in the northern area (Galicia and Asturias) it's rainy even in that season, due to its oceanic weather. Then, on winter few areas are hot - the only ones are the Canary Islands, previously mentioned, and the southern zone.

The third photo says: ''The word Spain makes me think about the bulls. I think this is a cruel show that belongs to the Spanish culture. I think it´s difficult to see this show''.

Bullfights are very important for the majority of Spanish people because it´s a deeply rooted tradition, but nowadays most of teenagers haven't seen this show live. However, lots of people think that it´s a bad custom that is against the animal rights, and, in fact, they finally managed to close one of the buildings dedicated to it. There is a strong controversy about bullfights.

Finally, there are people from other countries that think that we are lazy, we just want 'fiesta' and 'siesta', we smoke and drink a lot... Furthermore, we are thought to be very extroverted and to eat very calmly. Maybe these last things are true.

They may be correct if they say that some people are lazy and just want 'fiesta', but there are other people that are hardworking, - politicians are not included in this classification, of course - just like rude ones but, as every country, there are a wide variety of people.