Village
Monteagudo de las Vicarías is a town of 169 inhabitants, head of the Soria district of Las Vicarías, situated 9 kilometres from the Nacional II, with the hamlet of Valtueña incorporated into its territory at the end of the 20th century. It had its own station on the Valladolid-Ariza line, opened in 1895 and closed to passenger traffic in 1985, and until 1916 it was called simply Monteagudo; since 2019 it belongs to Los Pueblos Más Bonitos de España. It preserves the town wall, the Puerta de la Villa, the castle-palace of la Recompensa and the church of Nuestra Señora de la Muela, as well as several hermitages and Celtiberian remains at Borjabudo and Tartaragudo. On its territory stands the Torre de Martín González, the last fortress that separated Castile from Aragon.
Monument
A late-medieval fortress of pentagonal plan and ashlar masonry, bearing the coat of arms of the Hurtado de Mendoza, lords of Almazán. Inside it opens onto a Renaissance courtyard with a double gallery on columns with Ionic capitals; it was placed under protection in 1949 under the decree for the protection of Spain's castles.
Monument
The church of Nuestra Señora de la Muela, built between the 15th and 16th centuries beside the fortress-church of Monteagudo de las Vicarías, has a single nave of three bays with a main chapel with a small rectangular apse, a gallery at the foot and side chapels, all covered with ribbed vaults of differing designs. Its doorway, in Hispano-Flemish style, opens in a moulded segmental arch with engaged baluster columns and Renaissance motifs, and bears the coat of arms of the Mendoza family, patrons of the work. The main altarpiece, in Romanist style, was made in the late 16th century by the Sorian sculptor Gabriel de Pinedo. Its massive bulk dominates the walled village and it functioned as the last defensive refuge of the border town.
Monument
The main chapel of the church of Nuestra Señora de la Muela keeps a Renaissance altarpiece of the seventeenth century; the ensemble is completed by the altarpiece of Santiago, a Renaissance pulpit carved in stone and the image of the Cristo del Tránsito.
Monument
Monteagudo is one of the few walled precincts preserved complete in Castile and León: the medieval enclosure surrounds the settlement and opens through the Puerta de la Villa, also called del Arco, the monumental entrance that has come down standing.
Monument
The hermitage of Nuestra Señora de Bienvenida stands on the outskirts of the town of Monteagudo de las Vicarías. Built before 1543, though with later alterations, it consists of a single rectangular nave with a square apse, presided over by a simple but beautiful Baroque altarpiece whose canvases were painted by Juan Zapata Ferrer in 1690, also the author of the frescoes in the San Saturio hermitage in Soria. On the outside, sober and austere in character, the rubble-stone walls are reinforced by slender buttresses and have hardly any openings, apart from two splayed windows and the Renaissance doorway, with simple geometric decoration incised on its voussoirs. Around the image of the patroness of Monteagudo revolve the town's main festivities, held from 24 to 28 August.
Monument
Also called the San Marcos hermitage, it stands at the foot of the Castillo de la Raya, on the site where the church of a small settlement may once have stood. The original building was erected in 1375 on the occasion of the signing of the Treaty of Almazán, deliberately on land that was both Aragonese and Castilian, although the building that survives today corresponds to a 17th-century rebuilding dated by an inscription of 1660. The border line between the old kingdoms of Castile and Aragon ran through the middle of the nave - from the baptismal font to the chancel it belonged to Pozuel de Ariza, and from the font to the entrance, to Monteagudo - and during the pilgrimages those attending stood according to that division. It preserves in its chancel a coffered ceiling of Mudéjar taste, the most valuable element of the building.
Monument
A fortified watchtower raised to keep watch over the valleys of the Nágima and the Jalón on the line that separated Castile from Aragon. Also known as the tower of Martín González, it was one of the last fortresses of the Castilian border.
Monument
In the centre of Valtueña, a hamlet today integrated into the municipality of Monteagudo, stands the church of Nuestra Señora de la Asunción. Valtueña was a municipality of its own and in the census of 1842 it gathered 81 households and 326 inhabitants.
Nature
A 19th-century dam refurbished in the 1980s that collects the waters of the river Nágima and covers about a hundred hectares; the locals simply call it «el pantano» (the reservoir). It has given rise to the wetland with the greatest bird diversity in the province of Soria, which is why it has been declared a Special Protection Area for Birds and included in the Natura 2000 network. It can be reached on foot from the hermitage of Nuestra Señora de Bienvenida, in Monteagudo de las Vicarías, by taking the path on the left and walking one kilometre; by car it is reached via the road linking Monteagudo with Fuentelmonge, or the one heading towards Almazán.
Nature
The wetland hosts breeding populations of black-necked grebe and red-crested pochard, with important concentrations of post-nuptial moult; in winter common coot and common pochard abound, and flocks of common crane use the shores as a roost.
Activity
A path of some seven kilometres goes round the sheet of water and links up with a bird hide, a panoramic viewpoint and fitted-out fishing stands, designed to bring people close to the wetland without disturbing the species that breed in it.
Historical milestone
The Valladolid to Ariza railway line, opened in 1895, gave an outlet to the cereals of the Vicarías and connected Monteagudo with the rest of the country; the passenger service was closed in January 1985 and the route was left abandoned.
Historical milestone
The municipal reorganisation of the liberal regime made the Tierra de Monteagudo disappear in 1834, the entity that grouped the hamlets dependent on the town; its villages then went on to constitute themselves as independent municipalities.
Historical milestone
This corner of south-eastern Soria returned to Christian hands with the military push of Alfonso I of Aragon, the Battler, between 1120 and 1125; from that frontier were born the vicarías of Serón and Monteagudo, territories of royal jurisdiction.
Historical milestone
Until 1916 the town was simply called Monteagudo; that year the reference to the Vicarías was added to the place name, the territories of royal jurisdiction that the king administered through a vicar and that gave their name to the whole comarca.
Curiosity
Los Pueblos Más Bonitos de España is an association created in 2010 by Francisco Mestre, inspired by the French model Les Plus Beaux Villages de France, with the aim of promoting and preserving the cultural, natural and rural heritage of areas with lower levels of industrialisation and population; before granting its distinction it carries out a rigorous investigation according to numerous and strict selection criteria. In December 2019 Monteagudo de las Vicarías was admitted to this association, which recognised the ensemble formed by its walled precinct, the puerta del Arco, the castle and the Gothic church.
Activity
The town's fair is held on 29 and 30 September and 1 October, and keeps the memory of the old livestock fairs that were convened in this corner of the border between Castile and Aragon.
Food and drink
The town's most characteristic sweet are the almendrados, almond pastries made for the patronal festivities that accompany a dry-farming cuisine made of roast lamb, migas and sausages from the pig slaughter.
Historical milestone
Valtueña, which had belonged to the vicarage of Serón and came to be a municipality of its own, lost that condition in 1976 on being incorporated into Monteagudo. Its population went from thirty-two inhabitants in the year 2000 to sixteen in 2014.
Curiosity
The census of taxpayers of 1528 recorded forty-four family units in Valtueña. Three centuries later, in 1842, the hamlet gathered eighty-one households and three hundred and twenty-six souls; today it does not reach twenty.
Monument
On the hill called Llano del Castillo, over the ruins of the old fortress that dominated Valtueña, stands today the hermitage of the Virgen del Valle: the sanctuary took the place left empty by the tower.
Monument
Next to the church of the Asunción, this small hermitage completes the religious heritage of a hamlet of barely sixteen residents, which keeps its three churches open thanks to the effort of those who return in summer.
Activity
The hamlet keeps a festive calendar of its own within the municipality: it celebrates San Isidro on 15 May and the Assumption on 14 and 15 August, dates on which the emigrants return and the village multiplies its population tenfold.
Curiosity
At the place of Borjabudo remains of Celtiberian settlement are preserved, the oldest proof of occupation of the municipal district and a reminder that these moorlands were inhabited long before the border of the kingdoms existed.
Monument
Beneath the roof of this hermitage is preserved a carved wooden ceiling in the Mudéjar manner, of notable artistic quality and rare in a building of such slight size and in such a depopulated comarca.
Nature
Besides the wintering cranes, the sheet of water receives black-necked grebe, common pochard, grey heron and greylag goose. The enlargement of the reservoir in the eighties multiplied its ecological value within the Natura 2000 Network.