Monastery of San Pelay

Some places are worth visiting for their grandeur, others for the story of how they were found. The monastery of San Pelay de Gavín belongs firmly in the second category: a set of medieval ruins that lay hidden and off the map until, in the winter of 1997, Federico Diez Arranz, a member of the Amigos de Serrablo association, came across them beside the Sía ravine.

The site lies next to the small village of Gavín, within the municipality of Biescas, in the heart of the Alto Gállego district of the Huesca Pyrenees. It is a secluded spot, bound up with the landscape of the ravine, and one best approached unhurriedly and with an active imagination, because what still stands is more a testament than a building.

Before that discovery, the little that was known about San Pelay came from written records. It was known that the community abandoned the monastery in the 11th century and that, after they left, the site passed into lay hands. It was these laymen who, in 1079, handed it over to the powerful monastery of San Juan de la Peña, one of the great religious centres of medieval Aragon. For centuries, then, San Pelay was little more than a name on paper.

The 1997 discovery made it possible to give that written memory a place and some stones, and it is also a fine example of the work Amigos de Serrablo has done to recover the area's heritage. For travellers interested in Romanesque architecture and the monastic origins of Upper Aragon, a visit to these ruins offers a different way to round off a tour of the valley: less monumental, perhaps, but with the appeal of something that very nearly vanished forever.