Castile and Leon

Castile and León (Spanish: Castilla y León) is an autonomous region of Spain, taking its name from the many medieval castles that it is home to.

Cities

• 1 León has a fine Gothic cathedral and a wealth of cultural, historical and architectural heritage.
• 2 Astorga is a cathedral city on the Santiago pilgrimage route.
• 3 Ponferrada is near the UNESCO landscape of Las Médulas.
• 4 Burgos has a Gothic cathedral, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
• 5 Palencia is mostly modern but old buildings cluster round its flamboyant cathedral.
• 6 Valladolid is mostly modern but with many interesting old buildings.
• 7 Zamora is studded with Romanesque architecture.
• 8 Salamanca has a wonderful old town centre, and many buildings are UNESCO world heritage sites.
• 9 Ciudad Rodrigo is a frontier town much bashed by Wellington.
• 10 Béjar has a museum about its textile industry.
• 11 Ávila, spectacularly ringed by ancient walls, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
• 12 Segovia is symbolised by its Roman aqueduct and crag-top citadel, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
• 13 Soria has a clutch of Romanesque churches.

Other destinations

• The Way of St. James, a traditional pilgrimage and modern hiking route, runs through the region.
• La Alberca is worth a visit. It is historical town with a population of about 1000. Only residents are allowed to have vehicles in the historical centre. In the off season, it can be a quiet, sleepy location. Besides being very beautiful, the town is known for the production of ham and other pork products.
• 1 Puerto de Navacerrada and nearby Valdesqui are two skiing areas on the boundary with Madrid.
• 2 Laguna Negra in the Sierra Urbion is a glacial lake ringed by granite walls. Hiking trails take in two similar lakes and the source of the River Douro.

Understand

Segovia Aqueduct

Lors feras chastiaus en Espaigne / E avras joie de neient / Tant con tu iras foleiant"

"Thou shalt make castles than in Spaine, / And dreame of joy / all but in vaine"

"Roman de la Rose" was written in the 13th century, and translated into English by Chaucer among others. It was a best-seller, as in medieval times it was the closest they got to romantic fiction. To this day, to "build castles in Spain" is the French equivalent of "build castles in the air", to engage in idle fantasy. It was mostly for the ease of a rhyme that the story picked Spain (where the rain falls mainly on the plain) but there were real knights and even more armchair warriors who dreamed of setting themselves up here, especially in the little kingdom named for its castles.

Meseta Central is a extensive plateau at around 700-1000 m altitude, boxed in by mountain ranges that force the drainage west to the Atlantic, swelling into the river Duero / Duoro. It's reasonably fertile, so it was mostly for agricultural produce that the Romans moved in from 218 BC, then they heard about the gold and other valuable metals. The gold mines of Médulas funded Rome the way the Americas later funded the Spanish Empire at its zenith. The aqueduct at Segovia is the Romans' best-known work here, and they built walls around several cities, maintained in later ages.

They marched away to be replaced by the Visigoths, but from around 710 AD the Moors captured all but the northern fringes of Spain. For over 200 years this region was a borderland, never beautified like the cities of Andalusia, and it became depopulated. The Christian pushback began in 722 and by 910 the Kingdom of León was established, covering the northwest quarter of Spain. Its eastern portion Castile split off in the 11th century but reunited in the 13th; this became a leading force in the Reconquista, so places as far away as Seville and the Canaries became part of it, and the union with Aragon in 1469 effectively created a single Spain. The present autonomous community of Castilla y León is a smaller entity but still the largest subnational political unit in the European Union; it's larger than Belgium.

The Reconquista was not just territorial but cultural: the area was repopulated from further north, and churches and secular noble buildings sprang up everywhere. There was royal patronage as the court and capital moved about, until those settled in Madrid and Spain fell on hard times. Later industry and development was limited so this has left a wealth of old cities and sights such as cathedrals, many recognised as UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

• Tourist information

Climate

Castile and León has long, cold winters, with average temperatures between 3 and 6 °C in January, and short, hot summers (average 19 to 22 °C), but with the three or four months of summer aridity characteristic of the Mediterranean climate. Rainfall, with an average of 450–500 mm per year, is scarce, accentuating in the lower lands.

Talk

Spanish is the main language. Everyone in Castile and Leon speaks Spanish, but in the provinces of León, Zamora and Salamanca, Leonese is also spoken by a small minority.

Get in

Bishop's Palace, Astorga

By plane

Madrid Barajas Airport (MAD ^IATA) is usually the best airport for reaching this region, for its wide range of flights and good onward transport. Several buses for Castile and Leon start from this airport.

Castile-León itself has only small airports, at Valladolid (VLL ^IATA), León (LEN ^IATA), Salamanca (SLM  ^IATA) and Burgos (RGS ^IATA). Typically these link to Spanish holiday islands such as Mallorca or the Canaries. Some have flights from Barcelona (with connections across Europe), but not from Madrid which is too close to fly.

By train

High-speed trains fan out from Madrid Chamartín to all the main cities, continuing to Ourense, Vigo and Portugal. Slower trains start from Madrid Principio Pio, eg to Ávila. One daily train is direct from Barcelona via Zaragoza to Burgos and Valladolid.

From France the shortest route is via Hendaye and Irun. From there trains run to Burgos, Palencia, Valladolid or León.

By bus

Alsa is the main inter-city bus line, plying from Madrid Estación Sur ("south station") and stopping at Moncloa interchange in the northwest suburbs. Some buses start from Madrid Airport.

Get around

The best way to cover the great distances within the region is by train. High-speed trains run several times a day on the Madrid-Segovia-Valladolid-León line, otherwise Media Distancias (MD; corresponds roughly to an Interregio) and Regional Express (RE) are offered.

Castilla y León has an extensive rail network, including the principal lines from Madrid to Cantabria and Galicia. The line from Paris to Lisbon crosses the region, reaching the Portuguese frontier at Fuentes de Oñoro in Salamanca. Astorga, Burgos, León, Miranda de Ebro, Palencia, Ponferrada, Medina del Campo and Valladolid are all important railway junctions.

The region is also crossed by two major ancient routes:

• The Way of St. James, a hiking trail and a motorway, from east to west.
• The Roman Via de la Plata ("Silver Way"), a main road through the west of the region.

See

Las Médulas

UNESCO World Heritage Sites

• The gothic cathedral of Burgos.
• Segovia's old town and aqueduct.
• Old town and churches outside the city walls of Ávila.
• Salamanca's old town.
• Las Médulas, the ancient site of the most important gold mine of the Roman Empire.
• The archaeological site of Atapuerca, with extraordinary paleontological finds, fossils of Homo antecessor, Homo heidelbergensis, Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapien
• The prehistoric rock carvings in Siega Verde.

UNESCO World Biosphere Reserves

• • Valle de Laciana
  • Babia
  • Alto de Bernesga
  • Los Valles de Omaña y Luna
  • Alto de Bernesga
  • Los Argüellos
  • Las Sierras de Béjar y Francia
  • Los Ancares Leoneses
  • Real Sitio de San Ildefonso-El Espinar
  • Meseta Ibérica Transboundary Biosphere Reserve (Portugal/Spain)

Do

Hiking around Las Mèdulas.

Stay safe

Castile and Leon is one of Spain's safest regions. Some neighbourhoods in larger cities like Valladolid may be less appealing, but are rarely unwelcoming.

With agriculture being such an important part of the region's culture and economy, animals can be seen roaming everywhere. Avoid walking on farmland and do not disturb livestock.

Go next

• Beiras – central Portuguese region
• Extremadura
• Northern Portugal