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Villardefrades, Where Time and Construction Stopped in 1790
As two 93-year-olds explained to me, when the donor funding this massive baroque church died, so did the project
A bend in Highway VP705 took us through the town of Villardefrades, population 171.
Here, the 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 did not 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.
Birds fly about and sing in what would have been the nave of the church.
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.
