Village
El Royo is the head town of the comarca of El Valle y La Vega Cintora, in the province of Soria, with 248 inhabitants spread between the town of the same name and the settlements of Derroñadas, Hinojosa de la Sierra, Langosto and Vilviestre de los Nabos. Situated on a mountainside at 1,070 metres of altitude, between the rivers Duero and Razón, much of its extensive territory is protected within the Natura 2000 Network, in the sierras of Urbión and Cebollera. Above the village rises the hillfort of the Castillo de El Royo, from the Iron Age, whose wall came to measure 18 metres in width and more than 2 in height. On the second Saturday of July, the residents of El Royo and its hamlets go up in procession to the hermitage of Nuestra Señora del Castillo, in the festival known as the Romería de El Voto.
Monument
A fifteenth-century fortress of rectangular plan, with a double trapezoidal enclosure, round towers at the corners and a keep of several floors lit by arrow slits; it stands above the hamlet of Hinojosa, in the municipal district of El Royo.
Monument
When they abandoned the castle as a residence, the Hurtado de Mendoza reused its ashlars to raise at Hinojosa de la Sierra a Renaissance palace with a colonnaded gallery, declared a Monumento Nacional (Spain's heritage designation in force until 1931).
Monument
Fernando de Pareja, chief governor of Galicia, ordered the fortress of Hinojosa to be built; for having taken sides in the war of succession in favour of Juana la Beltraneja, the Catholic Monarchs confiscated it from him.
Monument
A cross-plan church with a single nave and a tower of the early nineteenth century; it holds a Baroque altarpiece by Francisco del Río dated 1618, the municipality's most substantial artistic piece.
Monument
A Late Gothic chapel raised in the Sierra del Portillo, beside the remains of an Iron Age castro; from its esplanade the Cuerda del Pozo reservoir and the whole Vega Cintora are commanded.
Activity
The village climbs in pilgrimage to the hermitage of Nuestra Señora del Castillo on the second Sunday of July, a day that coincides with the festival of the Voto, the collective pledge that the council renews each year.
Curiosity
The hamlet preserves a handful of colonial-looking mansions raised by emigrants who grew rich in the Americas, with galleries and bay windows that break with the sober mountain architecture around them.
Historical milestone
Straddling the 19th and 20th centuries, emigrants from El Royo and Derroñadas founded in Buenos Aires the Sociedad Filantrópica de El Royo y Derroñadas, which sent money to the valley for schools and public works and financed the mansions of the indianos (returning emigrants).
Nature
The dam closes off the Duero in its upper stretch, and its reservoir touches the districts of Vinuesa, Molinos de Duero, Cidones and El Royo, with pine-lined shores and inland beaches much frequented in summer, among them Playa Pita, the official beach of the city of Soria. Its construction was approved in 1923 and, after the Civil War, Republican political prisoners from concentration camps in Zaragoza were used as labour, at least 189 of them; the works finished in 1941. It is also known as the reservoir of La Muedra, the name of the village submerged by its waters, whose church tower can still be seen rising above the surface. With a capacity of 249 cubic hectometres, it regulates the Duero, supplies drinking water to Soria and irrigates 26,000 hectares downstream.
Nature
The Vega Cintora is the river plain formed by the Duero as it crosses the north of the province of Soria, between the Sierra de Carcaña and the Sierra del Portillo, and gives its name to half of the El Valle y La Vega Cintora district. It comprises the villages of Derroñadas, El Royo, Hinojosa de la Sierra, Langosto and Vilviestre de los Nabos, while El Valle, watered by the river Razón, is popularly known as the Little Switzerland of Soria for its greenery and is the birthplace of Soria butter, which holds a protected designation of origin. El Royo, the district's chief town, stands at 1,070 metres above sea level and overlooks 127 square kilometres of territory.
Nature
A small waterfall set in the course of the Razón, the goal of one of the municipality's most popular short routes, which is combined with the climb to the hermitage of Nuestra Señora del Castillo.
Monument
Derroñadas, Langosto and Vilviestre de los Nabos each preserve their church with a Romanesque apse, three testimonies of the medieval repopulation of the meadowland scattered within barely a few kilometres.
Activity
The GR-86 crosses the municipality linking the Duero meadowland with the foothills of Cebollera; it is the long route that allows the whole north of the province to be walked along drove roads and forest tracks.
Activity
On 16 August the village celebrates San Roque, and in December, on the 18th, the festival of San Marcos closes the calendar; both bring together the descendants of the emigrants who keep a house open here.
Curiosity
The municipality brings together five settlements: El Royo, Derroñadas, Hinojosa de la Sierra, Langosto and Vilviestre de los Nabos, spread over 126 square kilometres in which fewer than two hundred and fifty people live today.
Nature
More than two thirds of the municipality fall within the area of the Sierras de Urbión y Cebollera, to which other Natura 2000 Network designations are added: pine woods, oak woods and riverbanks at the foot of the Urbión massif.
Nature
On a height of the municipal district are preserved the ruins of an Iron Age castro whose defences reach eighteen metres in width, a sample of the pre-Roman settlement that preceded the present hamlets.
Nature
The Duero crosses the municipal district still young, shortly after leaving the reservoir, and receives here the waters of the Razón that come down from the Cebollera. Its banks of alder and willow are included in the Natura 2000 Network.
Activity
To the festive cycle of the municipality, which includes the July pilgrimage festival and San Roque in August, is added in December the celebration of Nuestra Señora de la Esperanza, the only one that gathers the village in the middle of winter.