Village
Hontalbilla is a town in the province of Segovia, situated at 888 meters of altitude between Cuéllar and Cantalejo, about 19 kilometers from each; it belonged to the Comunidad de Villa y Tierra de Cuéllar, within which it was the head of its own sexmo, the one bearing its name. It has about 277 inhabitants. Its current name comes from Fuente Albilla, already documented in 1184 as Fontalvella and, still in the 19th century, as Ontalvilla, a form recorded in Agapito Marazuela's songbook. In the 19th century its pino negral pine forest yielded the best timber in the district, and in May the village celebrates the pilgrimage of the Santo Cristo de Hontariego.
Monument
The parish church dominates the centre of the village and was, according to local tradition, a target of the bandit known as El Tuerto de Pirón, drawn by the jewels the church kept in the nineteenth century.
Historical milestone
The name of the village comes from Fuente Albilla, the white spring; through several intermediate forms it was fixed as Hontalbilla in the sixteenth century, when the locality was already the head of one of Cuéllar's six sexmos.
Historical milestone
The Comunidad de Villa y Tierra of Cuéllar was divided into six sexmos and one of them bore the name of Hontalbilla, which also grouped Olombrada, Moraleja de Cuéllar, Perosillo, Adrados, Lastras de Cuéllar and Frumales.
Nature
In the mid-nineteenth century the geographical descriptions spoke of the large and fine pinewoods of Hontalbilla, which gave the best timber in the comarca; the pinewood still occupies a good part of the 38 square kilometres of the municipal district.
Activity
In May the locals hold a pilgrimage festival in honour of the Santa Cruz de Hontariego; the main festival, by contrast, is concentrated from 14 to 17 August around San Roque and the Assumption of the Virgin.
Nature
The climate is continentalised Mediterranean, with cold winters, hot summers and some 514 millimetres of annual rainfall concentrated in spring and autumn, the regime that explains the predominance of cereal and of pine.
Curiosity
Local memory links the village with Fernando Delgado Sanz, El Tuerto de Pirón, the nineteenth-century Segovian bandit who, so it is told, raided the parish church in search of the jewels kept there.
Historical milestone
In 1256 Alfonso X granted the royal fuero to the Comunidad de Villa y Tierra of Cuéllar, providing an institutional framework for a territory resettled at the end of the eleventh century under Alfonso VI by Count Pedro Ansúrez.
Curiosity
Raised to comply with the provisions of the diocesan synod of 1648, this small construction served as an ossuary; on its lintel appear carved skulls that remind the resident of the brevity of life.
Monument
Three kilometres west of the village stands this hermitage built on the ruins of the vanished place of Hontariego; the church of that hamlet, today reduced to a chapel, was dedicated to San Miguel.
Monument
The parish church, of Latin-cross plan and three naves covered with barrel vaults and Baroque plasterwork, is topped by a stone tower divided into three sections that dominates the houses.
Curiosity
The pendentives that support the dome of San Pedro are decorated with frescoes of the four evangelists, a painted programme that accompanies the Baroque plasterwork that covers the vaults of the church.
Monument
Among the treasures of the parish church figures a monstrance dated 1629 and donated by the young men of the village, a piece that survived the assaults suffered by the churches of the comarca in the nineteenth century.
Monument
The church preserves a chalice that came out of the workshop of the silversmith Gabriel de Segovia, alongside a baptismal font and a processional cross that complete a liturgical treasure unusual in a village of fewer than three hundred residents.
Food and drink
Beside the church the old chicory factory is falling into ruin, the root that was roasted and ground to replace coffee in the decades of scarcity; its cultivation and its roasting gave work to a good part of the village.
Activity
A forest path of 10.2 kilometres links the lagoons of Lastras with those of Hontalbilla, crossing pine woods and hollows; it is the best signposted walking route of the municipal district and is covered in little more than two hours.
Nature
The lagoons of the municipal district host water birds, waders and birds of prey, wetlands of sandy bottom set among pine woods at 890 metres of altitude, in a municipality of 38 square kilometres and seven inhabitants per kilometre.
Historical milestone
The document by which Alfonso VIII transferred a group of hamlets to Cuéllar, dated 1184, contains the first written mention of the place under the form Fontealvella; in 1247 it reappears as Fuentalviella del Pinar.
Activity
On 22 February the village celebrates its patron, San Pedro en Cátedra, the feast that gives its name to the parish church and the only occasion of the winter in a calendar concentrated in spring and summer.
Activity
From 14 to 17 August Hontalbilla holds its main festivities in honour of Nuestra Señora de la Asunción and of San Roque, four days that multiply the village's usual population several times over.