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Rural tourism in Aldeaduero: the luxury is the landscape
InfoPatrocinio
Inaugurated in 2010, Aldeaduero pampers its guests in an exceptional rural tourism complex with a luxury natural attraction: the Natural Park of Las Arribes del Duero in Salamanca (Spain).
Early 2010 saw the launch of commercial operations in the Aldeaduero rural tourism complex after a strong investment of almost nine million euros that has entirely redeveloped an old workers' settlement in a Natural Park of exceptional beauty.
Private initiative has almost entirely defrayed the cost of this innovative project (only the industrial development society of Castilla-León, Sodical, holds a very small share), an ambitious multiuse rural tourism space boasting 188,000m2, 26 one- to three-bedroom chalets, a 21-room hostel, 4-star hotel, restaurant, swimming pool and sports facilities.
The principal shareholders of the company are Balbino Fraga and Eugenio Gascón, with Urbano Villanueva holding a lesser share. The starting point was the painstaking redevelopment and fit-out of an old Iberduero workers' village dating from the 1950s, in the heart of the Natural Park of Las Arribes del Duero and in the vicinity of the International Parque Douro of Portugal, making this initiative exceptional in both its execution and its environment.
Undiscovered natural spectacle
Salamanca's Las Arribes, together with its neighbour in Zamora, is a complex of canyons and waterfalls forming a deep granitic crevice gouged out by the river Duero, which flows through enclosing gorges and sparkling pools unequalled in Europe. This is one of the continent's largest protected areas for its ecological value.
This river corridor flowing between massive crags offers “the most beautiful, wild and breathtaking natural landscape in the whole of Spain”, wrote Miguel de Unamuno. And yet, in sharp contrast, it is one of the country's remotest and most unknown spots.
This area of Salamanca comprises 55 small townships with a very low population density of around nine inhabitants per square kilometre. The microclimate in some of the areas is exceptionally temperate, giving rise to meso-Mediterranean vegetation.
The tourist area of Aldeaduero is covered in orange and mandarin trees, olive trees and all types of fruit trees. On the opposite Portuguese riverside, the slopes are brimming with vineyards growing Oporto designation of origin grapes.
In the surroundings we find stunning vantage points that also come within the Special Protection Zone for Birds, among which we find the endangered black stork, royal eagle, griffon vulture, etc.
The Duero as an attraction
There is more. 14 kilometres from the tourist complex is the major river port of Barca D’Alva that, while on Portuguese soil, is a mixed Hispano-Portuguese facility reached by the large river cruise ships with beams of up to 100 metres that our neighbours manage with a very considerable flow of foreign visitors from Oporto, a manna from heaven of which we Spaniards barely get to taste the crumbs.
While it is true that there are small tourist boat services in the Spanish Las Arribes, they are not a patch on the Portuguese system of cruises combined with luxury hotels, winery tours, etc.
Associating and coordinating with our neighbours is still an unresolved matter for the people of Salamanca, and the initiative of the Aldeaduero rural complex could be an opportunity to launch such enterprises.
Enlaces de interés
•www.aldeaduero.com
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Published in Tourist and Adventure Travels by Miguel Ormaetxea (texto y fotos) on 27/01/2011
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