Village
Pancorbo is a town of around 430 inhabitants in the Valle del Ebro comarca, in the judicial district of Miranda de Ebro, set within the gorge that opens a passage from the Castilian meseta to the Ebro valley through the montes Obarenes, where the río Oroncillo that crosses the village rises. A place of passage since ancient times between the Basque Country and the meseta, it has preserved its layout and its popular architecture, with the Pancorbo houses stepped along the narrow gorge. It is dominated by the early medieval castle of Santa Marta and the ruins of the fort of Santa Engracia, built between 1794 and 1797 facing France. The town's name already appears in 957 in a document of the monastery of San Millán de la Cogolla, and it is home to the first Centro de Cría en Pureza y Selección for the Losino horse.
Nature
The Pancorbo gorge, in the Montes Obarenes (Burgos), is a natural and historic passage between the upper Ebro valley and the Bureba, the gateway to the Castilian plateau, for which it is known as the Gate of Castile. The Oroncillo river cuts its way through this rocky wall, forming a shadowy ravine with vertical walls through which human, animal and plant migrations have always passed between the north of the peninsula and the plateau. Because of its strategic value it has always been under military watch, as attested by the remains of fortifications in its surroundings, among them the castle of Santa Marta and the fortress of Santa Engracia, from 1794. It is included in the Montes Obarenes-San Zadornil nature park.
Monument
A fortress perched on the crags of the gorge, known as La Sala and attributed to the repopulation of the ninth century; it retained strategic value until it burned and was left razed in 1835, during the Carlist wars.
Monument
The fortress of Santa Engracia was built between 1794 and 1797 on the Montes Obarenes to defend the Pancorbo gorge, together with the fort of Santa María, after the War of the Convention against France broke out in 1793. Directed by the engineer Fermín de Rueda, the works produced a complex with capacity for 3,575 people, a hospital, storehouses, powder magazines and cisterns, the largest fortified enclosure in the province of Burgos at the time. Taken by the French marshal Moncey in 1808, after the battle of Vitoria it surrendered to Wellington's troops on 30 June 1813, in what became known as the Siege of Pancorbo. On 23 April 1823 the Hundred Thousand Sons of Saint Louis razed it to prevent liberal troops from being quartered there, and today it is visited in ruins.
Monument
A sixteenth-century Gothic church already documented in 1340, which after its restoration houses a museum of contemporary sacred art, an unusual use for a rural church on the Ebro route.
Historical milestone
Alfonso VII granted Pancorbo a fuero in 1147, consolidating as a town a site already mentioned in monastic documents of 957 and which for centuries controlled the traffic between Castile, La Rioja and the north of the peninsula.
Historical milestone
After the battle of Vitoria seven hundred Frenchmen were left isolated in the two fortresses of the gorge: Santa María fell on 28 June 1813 and Santa Engracia capitulated two days later before General Enrique José O'Donnell.
Nature
The Montes Obarenes-San Zadornil nature park, declared by law in October 2006, protects 33,064 hectares of limestone ranges in the northeast of the province of Burgos, on the border with Álava, between the Mediterranean and Atlantic worlds. The Montes Obarenes form the last southern foothills of the Cantabrian mountain range and rise like a great wall above the flat lands of La Bureba, with a Jurassic-style structural relief whose highest point is the Humión peak, at 1,437 metres. Bounded to the north by the Ebro river, the park comprises the Oña, La Llana, Pancorbo and Árcena ranges and the Montes Obarenes themselves, and its cliffs shelter one of the largest griffon vulture colonies in northern Castile.
Activity
The Pancorbo gorge, known as the Gate of Castile, is a historic and strategic passage in the Montes Obarenes, where the Oroncillo river cuts its way between vertical walls towards the Ebro valley; it has been used since ancient times as a natural passage between the Basque Country and the Castilian plateau, and today the N-1 road, the AP-1 motorway and the Madrid-Irun railway line all cross through it. The walking route follows the ravine between these walls and climbs to the ruins of Santa Engracia, a fortress built in 1794 at the top of the gorge, next to the remains of the early medieval castle of Santa Marta; from the path there are views over the stepped hamlet of Pancorbo, with the motorway and railway line hemmed in the same cut.
Food and drink
Pancorbo's traditional cooking always rested on the river that runs through the gorge: trout and eel from the Oroncillo are among the products the town claims as its own, alongside cereal and honey.
Food and drink
Beekeeping has long completed Pancorbo's cereal economy; the hives take advantage of the heather, thyme and gorse of the limestone slopes of the natural park that surrounds the gorge.