Salazar de las Palmas () is a Colombian
municipality
A municipality is usually a single administrative division having corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate.
The term ''municipality'' may also mean the go ...
and town located in the
department
Department may refer to:
* Departmentalization, division of a larger organization into parts with specific responsibility
Government and military
*Department (administrative division), a geographical and administrative division within a country, ...
of
North of Santander.
Etymology
The municipality bears the name of Salazar in honor of the
oidor
An ''oidor'' () was a judge of the Royal ''Audiencias'' and ''Chancillerías'', originally courts of Kingdom of Castile, which became the highest organs of justice within the Spanish Empire. The term comes from the verb ''oír'', "to hear," referr ...
, in addition to the fact that "Las Palmas" refers to the fact that when the town was established it was characterized by a large vegetation of palm trees.
History
In 1583, Captain Alonso Esteban Rangel founded Salazar de las Palmas. The village was established to facilitate access to the
Madgalena River in the
New Kingdom of Granada
The New Kingdom of Granada ( es, Nuevo Reino de Granada), or Kingdom of the New Granada, was the name given to a group of 16th-century Spanish colonial provinces in northern South America governed by the president of the Royal Audience of Santa ...
, in addition to creating a new frontier with the
Motilones natives.
Heritage sites
The construction of the parish church of San Pablo began in 1889, it was blessed by the bishop of the
Diocese of Nueva Pamplona, Evaristo Blanco in 1915.
It is estimated that the cost of the construction of the church was two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
As of 1953, the municipal seat had two churches, the parish of San Pablo with a modern style architecture and the old chapel of Belén, made of adobe and tapia materials.
The Belén chapel suffered damage to one of its towers after the
earthquake of 1875.
The chapel has an
retable
A retable is a structure or element placed either on or immediately behind and above the altar or communion table of a church. At the minimum it may be a simple shelf for candles behind an altar, but it can also be a large and elaborate structur ...
of Nuestra Señora de Belén, which is believed to have been found by a woman named Lucía in one of the stones of the Trinidad Creek in the 1600s.
Nature reserves
The comprises approximately 19,088 hectares delimited by CORPONOR. The municipality also has several lagoons such as Los Bueyes, Peroneo and Triaca. Salazar has the northern lagoon complex of Cáchira (Spanish: ''Complejo Lagunar Norte Cáchira''), which also includes parts of the Arboledas and Cáchira municipalities. The Regional Natural Park, abbreviated as PNR, was declared by agreement number 020 of 2013 and it is located in the northern lagoon complex.
Climate
References
External Links
Government of Norte de Santander - Salazar de las Palmas
Salazar de las Palmas official website
Municipalities of the Norte de Santander Department
{{NortedeSantander-geo-stub