Urueña

Urueña is a Spanish municipality and town in the province of Valladolid, in the community of Castilla y León.

It has one of the best-preserved urban centers in the province of Valladolid, offering its visitors the appearance of a small medieval city. For this reason, it was declared a Historic-Artistic Site in 1975. It preserves a large part of the wall with two of its doors, some canvases of the castle, stone houses of a certain quality and the Gothic-Renaissance parish church of Santa María del Azogue. It houses the "Joaquín Díaz" ethnographic center, the Luis Delgado museum of world instruments, the Mercedes Rueda exhibition hall and the Museum of the Bells. In 1975 Urueña and its hermitage of La Anunciada were declared a Historic-Artistic Site, and since 2007 it is the first Villa del Libro in Spain, which is why it is included in the network of Villas del Libro in the world. On January 1, 2014, it became one of "The most beautiful towns in Spain" and since then the number of visitors has not stopped growing, in 2017 21,000 people visited it.

From many places in its urban area, good views of its surrounding territory can be obtained, which has turned Urueña into an unquestionable viewpoint of the landscape of Tierra de Campos. Outside the urban area, the presence of the traditional dovecotes and the hermitage sanctuary of Nuestra Señora de la Anunciada stand out, one of the best examples of Romanesque art on the Castilian plateau. The dedication of the Virgin Announced is of great tradition in this town, celebrating its patron saint festivities on March 25 and the pilgrimage on September 8.

Toponymy

The term "Urueña" could be derived from the Basque term ur meaning 'water', plus the pre-Roman locative suffix -anca, first transformed into -anga and then in -ueña when becoming Spanish. According to the linguist Álvaro Galmés de Fuentes, the suffix would come from the Celtic onna which means 'source or stream'. Or for its repopulators of the Cuento, valley and Leonese river.

Geography

The municipality is located in the province of Valladolid, being excluded from the region known as Tierra de Campos, located on a hill, in the foothills of the Torozos mountains.

History

Panoramic view. Down in the first place the hermitage, and up in the background the walls; photo of the beginning of the centuryXX..

Street four corners, first half centuryXX..

A street in the town, in 2005.

View from the southeast, with two doves in the foreground.

View of Urueña in 2012.

The history of this town takes us back to the first Vaccean settlements, it was romanized at the beginning of our era and Christianized around the X. It was the head of the Infantado de Valladolid in the 12th to 14th centuries.

The place where the town is located, strategically dominating the valley, was very attractive for the first settlements. It is believed that its place name is a voice inherited from its first inhabitants, the Vacceos: Ur-Uru (water area) and Anna-Aeneas (sister). On the slope of the hill where the town is located, there has been a spring of clean waters since ancient times from which the population has been supplied over the centuries. In the middle of the XX century, a fountain was built inside the town with the water brought from said spring, to facilitate supplies to the neighbors.

The Romans arrived in these lands around the year 1 B.C. C. A linking road between Palencia and Zamora passed through the term, via de la Toresana, where remains of the road and a bridge remain.

In the Middle Ages, with King Sancho II of Castile (Sancho el Fuerte), the town was the head of the Infantado de Valladolid. His sister, Doña Urraca, took care of and lived in the fiefdom. Later, Alfonso VII granted his sister Sancha Raimúndez the Infantado de Valladolid, with the dominium of the towns of Medina de Rioseco, Castromonte and Urueña, all three on the border between the kingdoms of León and Castile, which in the reign of this king were united. In 1157 Alfonso VII died, dividing the kingdoms again: he left Leon to his son Fernando II and Castilla to his another son Sancho III el Deseado , who was the one who fortified the Plaza de Urueña in view of the new division. Sancho III reigned for only one year, he was succeeded by Alfonso VIII of Castile who was only a child, but the Infantado de Valladolid passed to the jurisdiction of Fernando II of León who, feeling harmed by Alfonso VII's will, took advantage of Alfonso's minority VIII to seize these lands. When Alfonso VIII came of age, he made war against Fernando II and forced the signing of a peace treaty in Medina de Rioseco, which restored the borders between both kingdoms as Alfonso VII had left them in his will. After this treaty, the disputes between the two monarchs returned, and they had to make another peace treaty, the so-called Fresno-Lavandera Treaty, which lists the places that should belong to each kingdom; Urueña remained within the kingdom of Castile. During the following reigns, the town of Urueña would remain as a crucial border point between the two kingdoms.

View of Don Bueso estate from the walls

In the 15th century, King Juan II donated the villa to Don Pedro Girón, butler and favorite of the prince and future King Henry IV.

In 1876, the town suffered a terrible fire that destroyed half the town. The City Hall was totally devastated and with it all the archives. Recently, in the last years of the XX century and the beginning of the XXI century, the villa has undergone a great change in its appearance, structure and quality of life. The streets are paved, the houses and some palaces have been rebuilt, and the castle, which serves as a cemetery, is being restored and landscaped in 2005. It also has a very interesting cultural life, thanks to the different museums that have been opened to the public. under the most important of all, which is the Ethnological Museum, run by its creator Joaquín Díaz and located in a reconstructed house from the XVI century.

19th century

This is how Urueña is described on page 230 of volume XV of the Geographical-statistical-historical dictionary of Spain and its overseas possessions, a work promoted by Pascual Madoz in the middle of the century XIX:

URUEÑA

Villa with town hall in the province, territorial audience and general captainship of Valladolid (7 leagues), judicial party of Mota del Marqués (1), diocese of Palencia (11).

Located on the top of Mount Torozos, with good ventilation and healthy climate, surrounded by old and strong walls, with 2 single doors; it has 122 houses; the consistorial; primary school of instruction; a parish church (Santa Maria del Azogue) served by a lobby of beneficiaries, among whom the diocesan name is, the parish priest; at the foot of the hill where there is a large fountain;

Confine the term with those of Almaraz, Villanueva de los Caballeros, Villagarcía de Campos and San Cebrián de Mazote; within it is a convent of San Francisco.

The valley land is mostly of good quality; it has good meadows governed by a stream that forms from the mentioned source.

Roads: locals, in poor condition in rainy times.

Mail: received and dispatched in Villar de Frades.

Productions: cereals, wine, legumes, vegetables, fuelwoods and good pastures, with which there are still lanar, mular and asnal cattle.

Industry: agriculture and some of the most indispensable trades.

Population: 110 neighbors, 440 souls.

Productive capital: 1,055,400 real. Impossible: 105,540.

Monuments and places of interest

Its streets and its restored and reformed houses offer the appearance of a small medieval town. It preserves a large part of the wall with two of its doors, some canvases of the castle, stone houses of a certain quality and a Gothic-Renaissance parish church. It also has four very interesting museums. Outside the walled enclosure and a short distance away is the Romanesque hermitage of La Anunciada and the ruins of an old monastery. Prehistoric remains have been found in the municipal area.

Its streets are medieval in layout, with some houses made of ashlar stone, reconstructed and most of them made of adobe. The house known as de la Mayorazga (or simply La Casona) has been recovered and converted into the ethnographic museum of Joaquín Díaz.

Urueña, was the first Villa del Libro registered in Spain. However, now it shares the title with Bellprat (Barcelona), Cervera (Lérida), Montblanch (Tarragona), Puebla de Segur (Lérida), La Escala (Gerona) and the latest addition Urroz-Villa (Navarra).

Wall

The wall on the north side. To the right, the Azogue door.

The wall that surrounds the city is from the 12th and 13th centuries, made of masonry broken through from time to time by semi-cylindrical cubes. It adapts to the steep edge of the moor where the villa sits. It has two doors. The main one, Puerta del Azogue, opens to the north, and is the typical door built on an elbow for a better defense against possible invaders. The other door is to the south, bordering the previous one; It is the Arco de la Villa, less protected from an architectural point of view, because on that side the páramo falls abruptly to the valley. It is all crenellated and covered by walkways.

Castle

View of the main entrance of the castle of Urueña.

Urueña castle has a square keep and tubes in the corners. It is quite dilapidated and has served for many years as a cemetery. When it was built it was a very important fortress, as it formed the border line between the kingdoms of Castilla y León, a division that had been carried out in the middle of the century XII King Alfonso VII of Castile. Important figures in the history of Spain lived here. It was the habitual mansion of Doña María de Padilla, lover of Pedro I the Cruel. Others were prisoners, such as the Princess of Portugal Doña Beatriz, who later married Pero Niño, Lord of Cigales (Valladolid). The Count of Urgel Jaime II, defeated in the Compromise of Caspe and militarily in Balaguer, was tried and brought prisoner by Don Fernando de Antequera. Legend has it that the most famous prisoner guest was the Castilian count Pedro Vélez, when he was caught in an affair inside the enclosure with a cousin of King Sancho III the Desired. A romance tells the whole story, with stanzas as descriptive as this one:

the Count Don Pedro Vélez

in the palace was found

with a carnal cousin

of King Sancho the Wish,

the heels on the knee

And the unbroken jumbo...

Church of Santa María del Azogue

Church of Santa Maria del Azogue.

The parish of Santa María del Azogue is currently the only church in Urueña. It is located inside the walled enclosure, next to the "Puerta del Azogue". Built between the 16th and 18th centuries, it has samples of styles: Gothic in its apse, Renaissance in its nave and an incomplete Baroque reform. Built in stone, with buttresses on the outside, it has a single nave covered with wood and a large polygonal apse. The interior has an altarpiece from 1671, the work of Juan de Medina Argüelles, and the Christ tied to the column, the work of Andrés de Solanes, a disciple of Gregorio Fernández.

Hermitage of Our Lady of the Announced

The Announced, Romanesque hermitage with lombard decoration.

It dates from the 11th century century and is outside the walled enclosure, below, in the valley. The temple is built in ashlar, with very thick walls, without buttresses, decorated with blind arches and Lombard bands on the walls of the three apses and the transept.

In the 18th century the current alcove with a quadrangular plan was added to the apse and the foot portal was changed. Inside is the image of Our Lady of the Annunciation, a dress image. Its festival and pilgrimage is celebrated on March 25.

Culture

Book Town

In 2007, the Provincial Council of Valladolid established the Villa del Libro in Urueña, the first in Spain, as a cultural tourism proposal.

The project was inspired by other existing book villages in Europe: Hay-on-way, in Wales, Redu in Belgium, Montolieu in France, Bredevooort in the Netherlands..., its objective is to economically and culturally revitalize spaces public in relation to activities related to books and literature in general.

In Urueña, books are not only sold in its specialized bookstores, but it is also a meeting place for experts around the Miguel Delibes e-LEA center (space for Reading, Writing and Applications). This center, with an area of 1,296 meters, houses a specialized library, an exhibition and conference room, and is the nucleus, together with the Joaquín Díaz Foundation, of the intense cultural activity of Urueña.

Specialized libraries

• Alcaravan, the oldest, directed by Jesús Martínez, specializing in Spanish.
• Alcuino Calligraphy & Art, directed by Esperanza Serrano, specialized in calligraphy and graphic arts.
• The Grifilm, specialized in cinema, directed by Inés Toharia and Isaac García.
• The Rhine of the Abrego, an artist's book.
• Enoteca, Wine Museum, specialized in wine literature.
• La Bodega Literaria, directed by Sergio Escudero del Río, specialized in ancient book and first editions.
• The Boutique del Cuento, directed by Esperanza Rodríguez Cabezón. Disgraceful, children's and youthful book.
• Páramo, directed by Víctor López Bachiller, specialized in ancient, curious and decatalogue books.
• First Page, directed by Tamara Crespo, specialized in journalism, photography and travel.
• Workshop of Artisanal binding, Rosa and Fernando take it.

Museums

Casa de la Mayorazga, headquarters of the Joaquín Díaz Ethnographic Center.

• Centro Etnográfico Joaquín Díaz
• Exhibition room Mercedes Rueda
• Quintana Bell Collection
• Museum of Instruments of the World of Luis Delgado

Parties

Every year the Virgen de la Anunciada is celebrated on March 25.

Urueña in the cinema

In addition to the specialized film bookstore, El Grifilm, the town has been the starting point for the story told in La vida sublime (2010) by Daniel V. Villamediana. In Urueña, as well as in the nearby towns of La Santa Espina and San Cebrián de Mazote, the exteriors were filmed.