Erill la Vall

The lords of Erill played a central role in the reconquest of Ribagorça, a region long dominated by the counts of Pallars. In 1064, counts Artau I and his wife Llúcia of Pallars Sobirà sold and exchanged Erill la Vall and the Boí Valley to counts Ramon V and Valença de Tost of Pallars Jussà, along with the castle of Erill and other holdings. Three years later, Artau I still counted Erill la Vall among the comital territories, and Ramon V's oath of loyalty included the men of Boí and Erill. By 1072, however, the Boí Valley had passed to Miró Guerreta, related to the lords of Sas and Bellera. In 1208, Guillem de Glorieta — a descendant of the Guerreta line, originally from Vall Ferrera in Pallars Sobirà — sold Erill and the Boí Valley to Guillem II de Bellera and his wife Sança. Guillem II, or a son of the same name, married Arsenda d'Erill, who died in 1266 as lady of Erill and Orrit. On her death, Erill la Vall passed to the Cistercian monastery of Santa Maria de Lavaix.

The Erill were a Catalan feudal dynasty originating from Erillcastell, now within the municipality of El Pont de Suert in Alta Ribagorça. The first documented lord is Ramon I d'Erill, in 1077. Later members of the family supported the union of Aragon and Catalonia through the marriage of Ramon Berenguer IV and Peronella of Aragon, and the family intermarried with the Pallars, Cardona, Montcada and other major Catalan houses. From the time of Arsenda's death until the dissolution of monasteries in the nineteenth century — Lavaix was dissolved between 1820 and 1835 — the village remained under monastic ownership. The title eventually passed to the Montoliu family, styled Montoliu-Erill, and is currently held by Don Alberto Álvarez de Toledo y Mencos.

A census from 1553 recorded 13 hearths, roughly 65 inhabitants. By 1849, when Pascual Madoz described the village in his geographical dictionary, it had just eight single-storey timber-framed houses, a chapel dedicated to Sant Cristòfol, and a parish church of Santa Eulàlia. The land was rugged and poor — rye and barley were grown, forests were cleared for a few seasons then abandoned, and the cold north wind off Caldes de Boí made conditions harsh, if healthy.

The old quarter of Erill la Vall is a declared national cultural heritage site, sitting at 1,255 metres on a raised terrace above the right bank of the Noguera de Tor river, at the foot of the 2,627-metre Pic d'Erill. The village is a fairly compact grouping of agricultural, livestock and residential buildings arranged irregularly around a paved threshing floor, with open spaces between them used as kitchen gardens. Historically it was reached by pack-animal tracks from Boí and Caldes; a road built about thirty years ago connecting it to the main valley road has slightly altered the village's form.

The dominant structure is the church of Santa Eulàlia, a Romanesque building of the Boí Valley group. It has a single nave with a wooden roof, a semicircular apse, two small apses flanking the nave, a porch, and a square bell tower that serves as the main visual landmark of the village. A hotel built near the church in the early 1960s is generally considered to have damaged the settlement's skyline.

In the early twentieth century, architect J. Salvadó discovered in the church sacristy a major Romanesque carved wooden sculpture group: the Descent from the Cross of Erill la Vall. The bulk of the group is now held at the Museu Episcopal de Vic, while two figures are in the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya in Barcelona.

Almost all the buildings in the village are of exposed stone masonry with slate roofs. Traditional farming and livestock activities have been supplemented by hotels, holiday camps, trekking and apartment construction, which together have slowed the long-running depopulation of the village and hint at a modest recovery.