Frómista on the Camino de Santiago
Frómista is one of the big stops on the Camino Frances in Palencia: the end of a stage with good services, first-rate Romanesque and the Canal de Castilla at the entrance. Few villages offer so much in so little space.
What to see in Frómista?
History of Frómista
The Middle Ages
The Middle Ages were Frómista‘s great era. Around 1066, in accordance with the wish expressed in the will of Queen Doña Mayor, the monastery of San Martín was founded, with the Romanesque church that is today the town’s great monument and was for centuries its religious centre.
In 1118 Queen Doña Urraca, then owner of the monastery, gave it with its jurisdiction to the Benedictine monks of Carrión de los Condes, a good example of the weight the monarchy and the monasteries had in the life of villages.
From the 12th to the 15th century the town was split between two lordships: the ecclesiastical one, of the abbot of Carrión, over the San Martín quarter, and the civil one, of the lords of Frómista, over the rest. One of them, Gómez de Benavides, managed in 1427 to bring the San Martín quarter into his lordship, and in 1436 he founded the Benedictine monastery of Nuestra Señora de la Misericordia.
In the time of the Catholic Monarchs the altarpiece of the church of Nuestra Señora del Castillo was made, another of the town’s great works. That artistic splendour, like the hospitals that cared for pilgrims, is explained by the Camino Frances, which linked these lands with the rest of Christian Europe.
Medieval Frómista also left three hallmarks: San Telmo, the miracles attributed to him, and the presence of an important Jewish community.
Pedro González Telmo (1185-1246)
Pedro González Telmo, born in Frómista, is the saint known today as San Telmo: a 13th-century Dominican friar, a very popular preacher and patron saint of sailors, who have invoked him in storms for centuries.
A nephew of the bishop of Palencia, he began his church career with his support: he became a canon and, on his uncle’s recommendation, the Pope named him dean. Later he left those posts to become a Dominican and devote himself to preaching, above all in Galicia.
The 16th and 17th centuries
Compared with the Middle Ages, the 16th and 17th centuries were a time of decline. The weight of the lordships was very heavy, and it is not surprising that Tierra de Campos showed sympathy for the Comuneros’ revolt, although wherever their army went it ended up living off the villages.
In 1521, passing through Frómista, the Comuneros forced the residents to pay 250 gold ducats to avoid being sacked. Added to that were the expulsion of the Jews, epidemics and other calamities that hastened the town’s decline.
Around 1591, under Philip II, Frómista had 521 households, half as many as a century earlier, and by the mid-18th century the figure had fallen to 217.
The economy was much weakened: no industry and hardly any trade, unproductive dry-farmed cereal, a shortage of timber and one house in five in ruins.
From the 18th to the 20th century
The picture began to change with the Canal de Castilla, which reached Frómista in 1773. Five locks were built here, four of them in a chain to overcome the largest drop on the whole canal. The water brought irrigation, transport of goods and flour mills that revived the town.
With the new provincial organisation, from 1833 Frómista was a municipality in the district of Carrión de los Condes; the 1842 census gave it about 1,480 inhabitants.
The population stayed at around 1,500 for much of the 19th century, and in 1865 the Northern Railway arrived, although the region’s crisis prevented the town from making the most of it.
The 20th century brought the same difficulties as to the rest of rural Spain, and today Frómista has some 700–800 inhabitants. Its future still rests on two inherited roads: the Camino de Santiago, which fills it with visitors, and the Canal de Castilla, whose channels allow more productive irrigated farming.
In short
Frómista sums up like few places the Romanesque, the history and the atmosphere of the Camino Frances. It is worth arriving with time to see San Martín at leisure and to stroll along the locks at sunset.
| Country | Spain | |
|---|---|---|
| Autonomous community | Castile and León | |
| Province | Palencia Province | |
| Judicial district | Palencia | |
| Location | 42°16′02″N 4°24′24″O | |
| Altitude | 780 m | |
| Area | 46.59 km² | |
| Population | 755 inhabitants (2023) | |
| Density | 16.96 inhab./km² | |
| Demonym | fromisteño, fromisteña | |
| Patron saint | San Telmo | |
| Postal code | 34440 | |
| Website | www.fromista.com | |