Logbook · 4 places

What to see and do in Castromonte

What to see and do in Castromonte (Montes Torozos, Valladolid): 4 places across monuments, nature, activities and curiosities, with a photo and a Google Maps location.

1 Villages · 1 Monuments · 1 Nature · 1 Food and drink

How far each place is from the centre of Castromonte

Monastery of la Santa Espina 6.6 km

Towns near Castromonte

Spain › Castile and León › Valladolid › Montes Torozos › Castromonte

What to see and do in Castromonte

Castromonte
Village
Castromonte is a municipality in Valladolid of a little more than 300 inhabitants, located among the wheat fields of the Montes Torozos and on the banks of the río Bajoz, on the Camino de Santiago from Madrid, with the monastery of La Santa Espina as a dependent hamlet. Its name comes from the Roman castrum and from the Montes Torozos that surround it. On its outskirts stands the old Fuente Sayud spa, now abandoned, from which the Castrovita mineral water came; a wind farm of 56 turbines now funds village services. It keeps the parish church of la Inmaculada Concepción, with a 16th-century tower, and the hermitage of el Santo Cristo de las Eras. On the first Monday after Pentecost it celebrates the Rogativa to la Virgen del Rosario, also called la Panadera.
Monastery of la Santa Espina
Monument
The monastery of La Santa Espina, a large Cistercian complex set in the heart of the Montes Torozos, stands in the valley of the río Bajoz, in the hamlet of the same name in the municipality of Castromonte. It was founded in 1147 by the infanta-queen Sancha Raimúndez, sister of Alfonso VII, to house a thorn from the crown of Christ given to her by Louis VII of France, and was settled by monks who came from Clairvaux. Its structure blends Romanesque and Gothic, to which a Baroque façade by Ventura Rodríguez was added in the 18th century. The monks lived there until Mendizábal's disentailment, and in 1937 its grounds served as a concentration camp for more than 4,300 Republican prisoners. Declared a Conjunto histórico-artístico (a heritage protection category, precursor to today's Bien de Interés Cultural) in 1931, it is now home to an agricultural vocational training centre.
Reservoir of el río Bajoz
Nature
The reservoir of the río Bajoz, popularly known as the Castromonte marsh or the Santa Espina dam, is a sheet of water set between the hills and the páramo, beside the Cistercian monastery of Santa María de la Espina, in the municipal area of Castromonte. It is an earth-fill dam with a clay core and a capacity of 60,000 cubic metres, built on the upper course of the Bajoz, a river that rises near Castromonte and, after crossing the Montes Torozos and receiving the waters of several streams, joins the Hornija before flowing into the Duero. It is one of the few wetlands in these limestone hills, and its surrounding holm oak and oak woodland contrasts with the dryness of the cereal-growing dry farmland around it.
Holm oak and thyme honey
Food and drink
The woodland and the moorland of the Torozos, with their holm oak and Portuguese oak groves and scrub of thyme, heather and lavender, give monofloral honeys very different from one another. That of holm oak, dark and of intense flavour, is the most characteristic of this corner of Valladolid.