Logbook · 6 places

What to see and do in Torquemada

What to see and do in Torquemada (El Cerrato, Palencia): 6 places across monuments, nature, activities and curiosities, with a photo and a Google Maps location.

1 Villages · 1 Monuments · 1 Nature · 1 Curiosities · 1 Historical milestones · 1 Food and drink

Towns near Torquemada

Spain › Castile and León › Palencia › El Cerrato › Torquemada

What to see and do in Torquemada

Torquemada
Village
Torquemada is a town in the province of Palencia, in the El Cerrato comarca, set beside the río Pisuerga, shortly after it receives the waters of the Arlanza, among the limestone plateaus that overlook the vega. Here was born, on 14 January 1507, the infanta Catherine of Austria, posthumous daughter of Joanna the Mad and Philip the Handsome and future queen of Portugal; her father's remains rested for three months in the parish church, with the queen allowing no woman to enter the precinct. The great twenty-five-arch bridge that spans the Pisuerga was built in the second half of the 16th century, the work of the master stonemasons Diego Gómez de Sisniega and his son García. The town, with about 965 inhabitants, also preserves more than five hundred underground wine cellars.
Bridge of Torquemada
Monument
An ashlar bridge with twenty-five arches that crosses the Pisuerga, built in the sixteenth century by the master stonemasons Diego Gómez de Sisniega and his son García; it is one of the longest historic bridges in Castile.
Riverside woodland of the Pisuerga
Nature
The recreational area beside the river offers the best example of riverside woodland of the lower Pisuerga as it passes through the Cerrato, with poplar groves and copses that relieve the dry farmland in a stretch dominated by limestone moors.
Wine cellars of the Quiñones hill
Curiosity
On the slope of the Quiñones plot more than five hundred underground bodegas dug by the residents can be counted, a landscape of vent shafts and wooden doors that testifies to the historic weight of the vineyard in the town.
Peppers of Torquemada
Food and drink
The pepper grown in the floodplains of the Pisuerga is, along with wine, the gastronomic hallmark of the town, and has its own annual festival at which it is roasted and jarred following the traditional method of the Cerrato.
Birth of Catherine of Austria
Historical milestone
The infanta Catherine, future queen of Portugal, was born in Torquemada on 14 January 1507, the sixth and posthumous daughter of Philip the Handsome and Joanna the Mad; as the queen had no midwife, it was her lady-in-waiting María de Ulloa who attended her during the birth. Her father was provisionally buried in the town's parish church before his definitive transfer. She grew up alongside her mother in the castle of Tordesillas, where she suffered privations at the hands of her guardians, and in 1525 she married by proxy in Salamanca her cousin John III of Portugal. On his death, in 1557, she assumed the regency of the kingdom in the name of her grandson Sebastian, then a child, a role she held until 1562. She died in Lisbon in 1578, at the age of 71.