Village
Serón de Nágima is a town of 125 inhabitants in the Las Vicarías district, in the province of Soria; in 1833 'Nágima' was added to its name to distinguish it from other places of the same name in Almería and Seville. It was a frontier stronghold facing Islam between the 8th and 13th centuries, with a mosque on which the church of Nuestra Señora del Mercado was later built, and it was enclosed by a wall of rammed earth, lime and cobble with three gates, of which some vestige still survives. It also had a Jewish aljama, documented above all in the 16th century in the so-called Barrio Escobar. Alfonso the Battler reconquered it around 1120-1125, and in 1138 Alfonso VII granted the town to the bishop of Sigüenza to resettle it. It preserves a castle, main square, three churches and its pairones.
Monument
A fortification of rectangular plan with two towers at the corners of the south face, raised in rammed earth and framed among the Mudéjar castle-palaces that appear from the advanced fourteenth century onwards. Today it figures on the Red List of heritage.
Monument
Late Gothic temple built over the course of the 16th century, raised from 1500 onward over a former mosque, to join the already existing churches of the Santa Cruz and Santiago; the master stonemasons Pedro de Zumista and his son Juan worked on its construction. It has a single nave of five bays with barrel vaults with lunettes and a pentagonal main chapel covered by a star-ribbed vault of intricate design, financed by the lords of the town, the Marquis of Poza and his wife Francisca Enríquez. It was consecrated in 1558, and in the mid-20th century the parish priest Moisés García discovered, after removing a worthless altarpiece, the Gothic arcosolia painted with frescoes that are preserved facing the entrance. The main altarpiece, in Churrigueresque style, presides over the image of the Virgin of the Market in the Assumption.
Monument
Hermitage built in 1688 on the right bank of the river Nágima, on the site of an older one of which some archaeological remains are preserved in the atrium. According to legend, the image of the Virgin of the Vega was hidden during the struggles between religions that coexisted in the area and found centuries later by a farmer in the very place where the temple was raised; for fear of theft, the original carving is kept in the parish church and a copy is venerated in the hermitage. With a Latin-cross plan topped by a dome with a lantern over the crossing, it preserves inside the altarpieces of the Virgin, Saint Agatha and Saint Lucy, as well as a choir and a camarín. It is the sanctuary of the patron saint of Serón, venerated alongside San Roque.
Monument
Small quadrangular temple, well restored, dedicated to the co-patron saint of Serón de Nágima. It shares with the Virgin of the Vega the leading role in the local festivities, held between 14 and 16 August. Located a kilometre from the town, it is built of rubble masonry, with a small porch set before the square plan. It stood in ruins until the bishop's visitation, in 1739, ordered the residents and the council to repair it within a year, on pain of demolition and reuse of its materials in the church of Santa María; it is believed to have been rebuilt the following year. Of other vanished hermitages, such as those of the Soledad and the Santo Cristo, only the memory remains.
Monument
The main square preserves sixteenth-century buildings with porticoes on stone columns, while the rest of the settlement is raised in adobe and rammed earth, the building technique that dominates the whole Nágima valley.
Curiosity
In the old cemetery of Serón survive the remains of the church of Santa Cruz, with a semicircular Romanesque apse that documents a church much earlier than the late Gothic one of Nuestra Señora del Mercado.
Historical milestone
The king exercised over these fortresses the right of vicarage, which he delegated to a cleric of his trust; in 1288 the renunciation of that right is documented, and the annexation of the territory to the bishopric of Osma, the origin of the comarca's name.
Historical milestone
In 1810 the Napoleonic troops burned and destroyed the rammed-earth castle of Serón; half a century later, in 1861, the ruin was sold to a private individual for four hundred reales and since then it has not stopped decaying.
Historical milestone
Known as Serón since the twelfth century, when it was a frontier stronghold between Castile and Aragon, in 1916 the town added to its name that of the river that crosses it and came to be officially called Serón de Nágima.
Curiosity
The procession of the Santo Entierro, on the afternoon of Good Friday, is made up for the most part of living tableaux: the locals represent Abraham and Isaac, the Three Marys or the Virgen de la Soledad alongside carvings of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Activity
On Maundy Thursday, the commemoration of the Last Supper in Serón includes the washing of the feet of twelve children of the village, known as los Angelitos, one of the most deeply rooted customs of its Semana Santa.
Activity
The hermitage of the Virgin of the Vega stands on the right bank of the river Nágima, in the municipal district of Serón de Nágima (Soria). The present temple, with a Latin-cross plan, a dome and lantern over the crossing and a bell gable at the foot, was built in 1688 over an older one; according to tradition, the image appeared hidden, concealed in times of religious strife, and was found by a farmer in that very place. For fear of theft, the original carving is kept in the parish church and a copy is venerated in the hermitage, alongside the altarpieces of Saint Agatha and Saint Lucy. On the second weekend of September the residents go up in pilgrimage to this spot, while the main festival, from 14 to 16 August, honours the Virgin and San Roque.
Curiosity
The parish church was raised over a mosque and the castle was built in rammed earth following Islamic techniques: two traces from the eighth to the twelfth centuries that explain the layout of the village and its earthen architecture.
Nature
The Nágima crosses the municipal district on its way to the Jalón and sustains a scant gallery forest of willows and poplars, protected within the Natura 2000 site Quejigares de Gómara-Nágima, between dry-farmed slopes.
Historical milestone
Alfonso VII handed over the town in 1138 to the bishop of Sigüenza so that he would drive its repopulation. The place had already been occupied in the Bronze Age, in Celtiberian times and in the Roman period, according to the remains that appeared in the municipal district.
Historical milestone
In 1158 an agreement between the crowns of Castile and Aragon was sealed here. The town lay right on the border between the two kingdoms, and that frontier condition explains both the pact and the fortifications of the surroundings.
Nature
Over plains that exceed nine hundred metres rise isolated hills that erosion did not manage to dismantle. Between the Sierra de las Cabezuelas to the north and that of El Muedo to the south, they draw the characteristic profile of this corner of Soria.