Ciruelos del Pinar

What to see in Ciruelos del Pinar

• The Corral del Concejo, a reminder of community justice: working animals that trespassed into someone else’s garden were impounded here until their owner paid for the damage.
• The pine and holm oak woods of the municipality, recorded in 19th-century accounts, and the edge of the Parameras de Maranchón.

Owned by the monastery

In 1234, the Archbishop of Toledo Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada granted the settlement to the Cistercian monastery of Buenafuente del Sistal. In the mid-19th century it had around 80 residents. It was called simply Ciruelos until 1964, when it added the suffix del Pinar.

A piece of Ciruelos in Madrid

The Cerralbo Museum catalogue lists a 16th-century predella, the lower section of an altarpiece, from the parish church of Ciruelos. It comprises three painted wooden panels showing religious scenes and saints. To trace this part of the village’s heritage today, one must look in Madrid.

Its provenance was not always clearly documented. A 1924 inventory linked it to Padilla, another village in Guadalajara; its identification as coming from Ciruelos was subsequently recorded in museum files. The local publication Nuestro rollo re-examined the altarpiece in an article by José Manuel Valles Garrido published in 2013.

The museum catalogue identifies the artwork and its origin, though it does not explain how or when it left the church, an episode that remains to be fully researched.

Nearby

Maranchón, four kilometres away; Luzón and Mazarete, five kilometres away.