The Town

Órbigo is river "without origin source, neither mother that baptizes" him. Their birth is double, that of the Moon and that of the Omaña. When both rivers join their flows, the resultant takes the name of Órbigo, hidrónimo of root prehistoric orbi-cua, fork of rivers.

It is river with history and legend. They say that their waters lowered colored of blood during several days in the year 456, when the battle between the Goths of Teodorico and the suevos of Requiario. It is also spoken of fights in the times of the Reconquest. Órbigo up went up the armies agarenos, on the way to the port of the Table, via normal of penetration in Asturias.

The Bridge also gave fame to the river and the river gave its name to the Bridge like last name. Their appearance is medieval, but he/she is considered like one of the oldest of the county leonesa. For their long and tortuous roadway, they passed thousands and pilgrims' of all kind thousands, from the pedigüeños and scamps until the kings and the saints.

To the left part of the Road, he/she was formed a small town, presided over by Santa María's church, with their reed-mace, their nest and their stork, permanent neighbor that gives up the emigration. To this neighborhood he/she was called Bridge.

The Hospital founded it the Gentlemen of San Juan from Jerusalem, in the right riverbank of the river, in the outlet of the Bridge. Around the hospital he/she was formed another neighborhood that he/she took the name of the building that he/she presided over it and for which the town is still known: Hospital of Órbigo.

Besides the name, they are still other memories sanjuanistas, as the title of the parochial church, the cross of the Gentlemen, the cruise of the pilgrims and the lot of the hospital. Today is a prosperous village, with more than 1200 inhabitants, commercial center of the region, of tourism and of I vacation, with good hotel establishments, camping site and recess areas for the visitors.

It seems to be that it was not always this way, because when over there it happened, in the XVII century the Bolognese Laffi that called to this town Bridge of the Water, writes: "Here we had a terrible night, lying on the saint floor. The neighborhood is so poor that rather is to receive charity that to give it, for what is imposed to pay the lodging that you/they offer you in a bad cabin." Neither in dreams he/she had been passed for you lie them to the good clergyman globetrotter that, three hundred years later, there would be in the place comfortable hotels, a good well installed camping site and a renowned kitchen for their soups with trouts.

The Honorable Passo

El Paso that entered in the literature with the title of Honorable, was the fair ones that it maintained gift Serum of Quiñones and other nine gentlemen, leoneses as him, from July 9 at August of 1434, 10 Sacred Year Jacobeo. Don Serum was constituted prisoner of love of a lady it avoids, taking an iron to the neck, in sign of its slavery, of which hoped to be liberated, sustaining the Step, in honor to the apostle Santiago.

It challenged all the gentlemen from Europe, "near the Bridge of the Órbigo, arredrado a so much of the Road." The Fair ones were concerted with real authorization, the regulation was published, stores, barriers and fences rose and he/she stayed the contest during thirty days. At the end, the ten champions, mangled and mended, they went to Compostela.

Don Serum gave a necklace of golden silver to Santiago's bust the Minor that presides over the processions mitradas in the basilica compostelana. As memory of this fact of weapons that so much applauded Don Cuisse, in the cubes of the Bridge two monoliths have been placed with the history of the Step and the names of the ten champions.

The municipality of Hospital of Orbigo, in the county of León is located beside the river of its name. In the middle of French road toward Santiago. On the way to pilgrims. This population is born to the shade of the bridge and we don't know when you/he/she could be. We only know that when the Hispanic-Roman aristocrácia of Asturica sprinkled the Rivera of the Orbigo with recess fifths for its distraimiento, they began to be carried out works for the execution of the Bridge.

It served as access to unite Astúrica with León. The famous road of Aquitaine that took from Astorga to Rome the gold of the astures, had in the Bridge a magnificent ally to cross the Orbigo. For him they passed from the Roman legions, until the armies of the Suevos and the Gothic ones and already finally, in the XIX century, the English and French troops, make use of him in the bloody days of the Guerra of the Infependencia. The population is born as consequence of our Bridge. As Municipality, he/she begins to have nature the year 1843.

Our gastronomy

It is the river Orbigo, the one that has given to this area, something that only in her you degusta, like it is the trout in all their varieties, like they are:

Soup of trouts.

Honored trout.

Tortilla of trouts.

Pickled trouts.

Trouts with ham.

appreciated these plates in the entire world.

Economic activity

This Villa has a great tradition like industrial center of transformation of the agrarian products and he/she owes it to the constant progressive formation of its School of Amplification of Primary Instruction and of Agriculture, been founded in 1890 by the Srs. Francisco and D.Pedro Fernández Blanco of Sierra and Pambley, masters that knew how to accommodate the teachings of the Institution of the free Teaching of Giner of the Ríos, to an area agrícula that has always been distinguished to be the vanguard in all the agrarian knowledge. In their factories of milk, piensos and pickles work their active population's practical entirety, amen of the intensive agriculture.