Humilladero chapel
Popular devotion

Very often, the intensity of the people's religious feeling does not match the magnificence of the building housing the object of their devotion. A very common situation is that of the chapels, or "ermitas", small buildings housing saints, Christs or Virgins to which the local people feel closer than to those worshipped in the larger churches.

The Humilladero chapel is one of these cases. The building can be traced back to the 16^th century. However, what we can see is the reconstruction done in the 20^th century, after the devastating explosion of an ammunition dump, which took place in Peñaranda in 1939, and which destroyed a good part of its urban area.

The inside of the temple is a small, simple nave ornated with several paintings and some carvings, although the main interest of the place is the intense devotion that people manifest on the statue of Christ humiliated before the crucifixion, the Cristo del Humilladero, who presides the altar, and the Dolorosa Virgin statue, beside it.

A legend tells the origin of this devotion: apparently, a cart pulled by oxen was carrying the statue towards a nearby village and stopped for no reason in this place, where the chapel now stands. The oxen would not move until the statue was taken off the cart, after which the oxen just walked on and continued their journey.