The long and the short and the Boal

We are going to dip off the road to come into Boal from the side.  The tiny lane tells you everything you need to know.  Boal is spot welded onto the slide of a very long slope. It hugs the contour, mostly to make it possible to go from one end of town to the other without the need mountaineering gear.











Boal seems to have progressed in the 18th century, when the town had four fulling mls, eight wrought iron workshops, a forge and 42 grain mills. During the Napoleonic Wars  French troops occupied Boal in the belief that a weapons factory existed in the town. A group of Boales residents participated in the " Alarm of the Cherry Grove " (they who gathered to prevent an invasion or defend themselves from the enemy), but they could not prevent Maurice Mathieu 's soldiers from invading the town on March 19, 1809. , establishing a camp in Llaviada , and causing numerous deaths, looting and destruction.





During the Carlist War the council was invaded again: in 1836, a guerrilla group led by the leader San Breixo entered Boal , who the following year was arrested and shot in the Piantón cemetery by a militia formed in Boal. Shortly after, in 1837 the parish church of Santiago Apóstol would be inaugurated, and in 1842, the town hall and the prison.

If it wasn’t war it was pestilence. In 1854 and 1855, a cholera epidemic was felt in the area, although without excessive death. That would not be the case of the smallpox epidemic of 1870, much more serious and deadly.





In 1895 blacksmiths of the council destroyed all the machines making tacks that a local businessman, Víctor Sánchez, was installing in the town of Armal, in order to start the manufacturing of nails.  They would not proevent cheap, British nails, coming in.  Tungsten mining developed - a thing of interest to Germany during the Second World War





Like so many rural centres, Boal has seen a decline in population.  In 1930 almost 9000 people lived in the municipality.  Today there is only 1500 - and many of them are old.  Almost 60% of the land is used for forestry, 30% is meadows and 1% arable.



The chief church of Boal is St James’.  A three day feast is held around the 25th July. The church has 6 reviews and averages 4.3 stars.  Blond Rider calls it a ,,Little Big Church’. 
















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