Clock Tower and the Robledo house

Chapter 5/9 · Lastres

This is the Clock Tower, the most emblematic building in Lastres. It began as a 15th-century tower used to watch over the harbour and the bay; the small window on the second floor, with an ogee arch whose curves meet in a point, may date from that time. The present tower, square in plan and four storeys high, dates from 1751.

There is a family story behind it. The merchant Toribio Menéndez Villar left money in his will for a clock, and his widow, Teresa Rita Robledo Colunga, bought four houses on this site in 1751, had them demolished and built the tower, a school and the schoolmaster's house; the schoolmaster also had to wind the clock. The clock came from London, made by the clockmaker Daniel Torin: it is driven by weights and has a single hand.

That school, the Trinidad school, was attended mainly by fishermen's children, among them the 18th-century mathematician Agustín de Pedrayes. According to Colunga Tourism, the clock is still wound every day and since 1751 it has failed to strike the hours on time only once. Opposite stands the Robledo house, from the late 17th or early 18th century, with a Baroque doorway, a projecting balcony and, above it, the family coat of arms.

Just a few steps away, the Buen Suceso Chapel awaits us.

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