The orchards

Los Huertos is a Spanish municipality and town in the province of Segovia, in the autonomous community of Castilla y León. It has a population of 176 inhabitants (INE 2022).

Considered part of the district of Segovia, it is located in the Segovian countryside, about 10 km from the provincial capital, in the valley of the Eresma river.

Within its municipal term there are the depopulated areas of Carrascal de Gumiel and Gumiel (San Pedrillo).

The town is located on the Camino de Santiago de Madrid.

Geography

Fragment of Page 456 of the 2010 Spanish National Topographic Map, which represents part of Los Huertos

Northwest: Carbonero enclave of Ahusín (Armuña)	North: Carbon Steel enclave of Ahusín	Northeast: Roda de Youma
West: Garcillán		This: Roda de Youma
Southwest: Valverde del Majano	South: Sonma Hontanares, Valseca	Sureste: Valseca

Birdlife

The municipality of Los Huertos has a great wealth of birds, distributed in two main habitats:

• The cereal plain, large tracts of labor lands in which cereals are cultivated (cebada, wheat, corn) and in which the arboreal vegetation is practically non-existent, so the birds that inhabit it nest directly on the ground and its plumage is mimiced with the land to pass unnoticed. Alaudidae species such as alondra, common clot and calandria can be found. Paridae paraids can also be seen as a triguero, jilguero or pardillo. You can also see bands of black corneja and occasionally some specimen of alcaravan.
• The shore of the river Youma, whose vegetation is formed mainly by plantations of Canadian chop, is chosen as a nesting place for species such as goldpendola, the vulgar pinzón, the ordinary nightingale, the dream scribe, the common greener, the petirrojo, the common mirlot, the shack and the bastard nightingale. Occasionally you can see some specimen of martin fisherman, common hen and royal heron.
• You can also find some species of birds of prey such as real milano, black milano, mouse bust, vulgar cernícalo and boiled eagle. Sporadically, cenizo and pale eagluchos can be observed. In some summer nights it is not uncommon to observe specimens of common lettuce.

It is important to highlight in summer the large concentrations of black kites and white storks around the Waste Treatment Center.

Document recognizing Los Huertos as the People of the Earth of Segovia belonging to the Sex of Santa Eulalia

History

It's pretty unknown. Due to its situation it is an ideal place for the old settlements, since it is located next to the San Medel stream and very close to the Eresma river. It is a town that is in a small valley sheltered from the cold.

The first written testimonies date from the Middle Ages, when the town received the name of Sancta María de los Huertos, shortening to its current name at the end of the century XVI. Since its foundation, it belonged to the Community of Villa y Tierra de Segovia within the Sexmo de Santa Eulalia.

Within its term were the towns, now disappeared:

• Carrascal or Carrascal de Gumiel.
• Gumiel (San Pedrillo), 2,000 m to the SSO, and bordering the river. Cited in the middle of the centuryXIII You'rema. San Pedrillo chapel in ruins.

Between 1884 and 1985 the 93 km long Segovia-Medina del Campo railway line passed through its municipal area (without stopping in the town), now dismantled. The closest stop was in Hontanares de Eresma.

Since 2001, and after great controversy between supporters and detractors,^{[citation needed]} a waste treatment plant was installed in the municipality of Los Huertos, which It serves the entire Segovian province, although it is approximately equidistant between the urban centers of Garcillán and Los Huertos itself.

Demographics

Throughout the XX century, the municipality reached its largest population in the forties and fifties, and began its demographic decline with the advent of technology and the abandonment of agriculture, which caused strong emigration of its residents in the 1960s and 1970s and, to a lesser extent, in later decades.

Population developments

Graphic of demographic evolution of Los Huertos between 1828 and 2021

Population according to Geographical-Statistic Dictionary of Spain and Portugal Sebastian Miñano.Rule population (1842-1991, except 1857 and 1860 which is a de facto population) or resident population (2001-2011) according to the Population Censuses since 1842.Population according to the municipal register of 2021 of the INE.

Symbols

The heraldic shield and the flag that represent the municipality were officially approved on April 27, 1999. The shield is emblazoned as follows:

« Hearing barracks. Prim e r o azur with a silver jug with five azucenas of the same, placed on a siple terrasa. Second and third, gules with a silver aqueduct, of two orders, made of sable and placed on ten pieces of silver. And a quarter of gules with the chains of Navarre in gold, and a tap of the same. Tied of the Spanish Royal Crown. »

Official Gazette of Castile and Leon No. 227/1999 of 24 November 1999

The textual description of the flag is as follows:

«Bridge number 1: Square flag, 1:1 ratio, green with a blue band, and with the municipal shield in its colors, spring to the center. »

Official Gazette of Castile and Leon No. 227/1999 of 24 November 1999

Administration and politics

House consistorial

List of mayors

Mayors since the 1979 elections

Period	Name	Party
1979-1983	Armando Monjas González	UCD
1983-1987	Vicente Fausto Monjas	AP-PDP-UL
1987-1991	José Torrego Real	PDP
1991-1995	Moses Bermejo Cañas	P
1995-1999	Yolanda Bermejo Pérez	P
1999-2003	Yolanda Bermejo Pérez	P
2003-2007	Juan Carlos de Frutos Garrido	P
2007-2011	Jesus Llorente Garrido	P
2011-2015	Alfredo Monjas Pérez (2011-2014†) Vacant	PSOE
2015-2019	Alfonso Asenjo Cabrero	P
2019-	Alfonso Asenjo Cabrero (2019 - 9-16-2022) Manuela Fernández (9-16-2022 -)	P PSOE

Culture

The parish church of Los Huertos

Hermitage of Las Vegas

Signal of the Camino de Santiago

Cross of Via Crucis next to the parish church

Heritage

• The consistorial house is located in the town square and a few years ago it was remodelled by the Junta de Castilla y León;

• The main monument is the parish church of Our Lady of the Assumption, which is located at the entrance to the village by the road, separated from the urban center by the stream San Medel, a tributary of the Sonma. At its origin (sixteenth centuryXVI) is a Gothic building to which reforms were carried out in Baroque times (centuryXVIII). Highlights its Baroque elder altarpiece of five streets and attic, where the image of the Immaculate Conception is enthroned;

• Hermitage of the Virgin of Las Vegas located about two kilometres from the village on a road. There was the carving of the aforementioned Virgin that was stolen in 1983 and that has not yet appeared, it was a polychrome wood image of the centuryXVI. The date of the hermitage is unknown, but it is known that already in the centuryXII It was built, because there were documents that showed it. The altarpiece of the hermitage dates from the centuryXVI-XVII and was also affected by the theft of 1983, in which four canvases disappeared (two representing Saint Joseph and the other two to the Virgin of Carmen) and the doors of the Sagrarian. They also stole a sabanilla from the altar and a very ancient Latin mass;
  At present, the Virgen de las Vegas Cultural Association has been created in which much of the neighbors of the village participate, which seeks to recover devotion around the Virgin of Las Vegas and restore the Hermitage dedicated to the Virgin;

• The route of the Camino de Santiago, part of Madrid and linking in Sahagún with the main route: the French road that starts from Roncesvalles. The road enters Los Huertos from Valseca and continues to Añe. The municipality has a hostel of pilgrims that came into operation in 2017;
• Via crucis, near the church;
• Chapel of San Pedrillo, ruins in the depopulated Gumiel (San Pedrillo);
• Vestigios of a mota or tower watches.

Parties

• The first of the year is in February in Santa Águeda, a party dedicated, above all, to women and where they hire music groups with dulzain and drum. Before the years of emigration, San Isidro was celebrated on 15 and 16 May, the Corpus and San Antonio on 13 and 14 June, in all of them there was dance. Today, the Labradors celebrate San Isidro with a religious act and an appetizer;

• The next feast is in August, the 17th, where the Day of Burns is celebrated and the Virgin rises to the church of the people, since centuries ago the area where the hermitage is suffered an important fire that was about to wash it and a husbandman to prevent the image from getting damaged and brought it to the church and on this day it is reminiscent;
• The big party is the weekend following the 17th of August, until the end of the 20th century was held on September 8. There are orchestras, mobile discoteca, mus campeonatos, dominoes, racing, barbecues, eggs with chorizo, paella etc. Years ago they brought lockers and made a small square with trailers and straw packs, but they stopped doing. At this time the town is very lively and the population is multiplied by four. The night of Thursday before the party is celebrated the peñas dinner after which they are all amenized by a charanga;
• On the second Saturday of October, the feast of La Bajá de La Virgen is celebrated, which consists of descending on the shoulders the image of the Virgin of Las Vegas from the church, where she had climbed on August 17, to the hermitage. It is an eminently religious feast where the pujas take place to put the Virgin into the hermitage, to which many of the children of the people who reside outside.