Villardefrades and the Unfinished Church of San Andrés

The unfinished Church of San Andrés. Photo by Vincent Gragnani.

A bend in the road takes Highway VP705 through the town of Villardefrades, population 171, where the walls—and only the walls—of an 18th Century church stand in the town’s Plaza Mayor. Having just come from Salamanca, home to Spain’s second largest plaza, this didn’t look like much of a Plaza Mayor, but judging from the grand stone walls and arches of the abandoned Church of San Andrés, Villardefrades was not always this small.

Floorless and roofless, the ground of San Andrés is covered in grass and weeds, and birds fly about and sing in what would have been the nave of the church.

Church of San Andrés, Villardefrades, Spain. Photo by Vincent Gragnani

We parked to get a closer look, and an older woman wrapped in a blue overcoat walked along the sidewalk.

She saw my curiosity.

“Nunca terminaron,” she said, explaining to me that the church was never finished.

“Iglesia de San Andrés. ¡Es una pena!”

I tried to determine the age of the church. The woman shrugged her shoulders when I asked how old the church was.

“Muy viejo. Siglos. Una pena.”

Iron gates prevented visitors from entering. As I walked the perimeter of a church, I felt like I had stepped into the 18th Century. The town had few signs of life, until two teenage boys biked by, one wearing a sweatshirt that bore the name of my hometown, Chicago. Surprised to see something familiar in a town that felt so far from home, both in time and space, I wanted to blurt out, “¡Yo nací en Chicago!” But I kept walking.

As I completed a full circle, I found that the old woman was joined by a man of the same age—less that two weeks apart, as it turned out. I assumed them to be a married couple. They told me they were both born in December 1924. At 93 years of age now, they had they lived in Villardefrades their entire lives.

“Sí, tooooda mi vida,” they both said, nodding.

“¿Y tus padres?” I asked?

“¡Sí, y abuelos!”

I wondered what life was like here 50 years ago, what they had done for a living, and where their children and grandchildren had moved to. But our conversation turned back to the church.

As I understood them, Villardefrades was home to a man who went on to be named archbishop of Manila. He sent money home for this church to be built, but when he died, so did the project, they said.

I told them we were en route from Salamanca to León, by way of Toro, and that we were moved by the Semana Santa processions in Salamanca.

Did they do a procession here, I asked?

Not in years, but the old man walked me to the middle of the street in front of San Andrés to point to the exact location of the Encuentro—the meeting of the statues of Christ crucified and the Virgin Mary—of processions decades ago.

***

I could have talked to them all evening, but León was calling.

I wished them a blessed Easter, and they wished me the same, as well as a good trip. We beeped the car horn as we drove away, and they both waved.

After returning home, I did some online research about the town. While some of the details were lost either in their account or my understanding of it, a post on El Dia de Valladolid backs up their story.

From a comprehensive post titled, El Pueblo de los Castigos, via Google translate …

But the emblem of Villardefrades is its unfinished church of San Andrés, which the neighbors still know as La Obra. It is a magnificent building, built with good masonry from 1763, which left its three naves exposed to the elements, although what has been done does not lack decorative detail. The Filipino donor died in the course of the works, although he bequeathed enough money to finish off the temple. But he did not count, despite his foresight, on the fickleness of the executors.

To carry out his pious works, which included helping the poor and the temples of Villavellid and Cabreros del Monte, he deposited the capital in a brotherhood in Manila and was careful to indicate in his mandate that the shipments be made in small batches. , in order to avoid the stalking of pirates and the risk of shipwrecks. His bank in the peninsula was the Dominicans of Madrid, where the Terracampino contractors had to collect their work. But man proposes and the elements dispose. To begin with, the works of San Andrés started late due to the loss of a ship with thirty thousand reais. Then, they often suffer delays, until from 1790 remittances are suspended for sixty-nine years, to be resumed between 1859 and 1867. A year later the activity stopped, leaving the temple truncated and unfinished.