Logbook · 8 places

What to see and do in San Leonardo de Yagüe

What to see and do in San Leonardo de Yagüe (Pinares, Soria): 8 places across monuments, nature, activities and curiosities, with a photo and a Google Maps location.

1 Villages · 3 Monuments · 1 Nature · 1 Curiosities · 1 Historical milestones · 1 Food and drink

How far each place is from the centre of San Leonardo de Yagüe

The Herrerian Church of San Leonardo Abad 150 m

Towns near San Leonardo de Yagüe

Spain › Castile and León › Soria › Pinares › San Leonardo de Yagüe

What to see and do in San Leonardo de Yagüe

San Leonardo de Yagüe
Village
San Leonardo de Yagüe is a town of almost 2,000 inhabitants in Pinares, Soria, 52 kilometres from the provincial capital; until 1952 it was called San Leonardo, a name the Francoist authorities changed following the death of General Juan Yagüe, who was born there, and which the 2022 Democratic Memory Law requires to be removed. Its founding is attributed to French Benedictine monks of the 10th or 11th centuries, who built a pilgrims' hospital here under the patronage of Saint Leonard of Noblat; the oldest document mentioning the place, from 1173, is the donation of Arganza to the hospital by Alfonso VIII. The town is dominated by a bastioned Renaissance castle that Juan Manrique de Lara had built in 1563 with the licence of Philip II; for Candelas and San Blas, dances are performed in the church to the sound of pipers.
The Renaissance Castle of San Leonardo
Monument
Juan Manrique de Lara had it built in 1563 with a licence from Felipe II: a rectangular bastioned plan, an inner courtyard and four bastions at the corners, a rare example of modern fortification in Castile.
The Herrerian Church of San Leonardo Abad
Monument
A seventeenth-century church in Herrerian style with three naves, in which several altarpieces stand out, among them one attributed to the sculptor Gregorio Fernández, the great image-maker of the Castilian Baroque.
The Aranda Gate
Monument
A medieval arch that is the only remnant still standing of the villa's old walled enclosure; it marked the exit of the road towards Aranda de Duero, the natural route to the Ribera of Burgos.
The Río Lobos Canyon in San Leonardo
Nature
The municipality shares the Cañón del Río Lobos natural park, created in 1985 and also protected as a Special Area of Conservation and an SPA within the Natura 2000 network, where the river carves a limestone gorge amid juniper groves and cliffs with colonies of griffon vultures. The gorge, cut into Upper Cretaceous limestone, is the result of double erosion: the wearing of the riverbed itself and the dissolution of the rock by water, which has left enormous cliff faces and an extensive karst landscape of caves, sinkholes and swallow holes. Its more than 10,000 hectares are shared between San Leonardo de Yagüe and other municipalities of Soria and Burgos, such as Ucero, Casarejos and Hontoria del Pinar, and a new plan under way would extend the protected area.
The Surname of a General
Historical milestone
The village was always called San Leonardo; in 1952, after the death of General Juan Yagüe, a native of the town, his surname was added, and it has appeared that way in the official gazetteer ever since.
The Pine Door Factory
Curiosity
Since 1955 the timber industry has made pine doors here and came to employ more than five hundred people, an exceptional case of industrialisation in the rural Soria of the twentieth century.
The Caldereta of the Magdalena
Food and drink
From 22 to 26 July, during the festivities of Santa María Magdalena, lamb calderetas are cooked in large pots to be shared out among the peñas, the communal dish par excellence of the pinariego villages.