Logbook · 5 places

What to see and do in Villavaquerín

What to see and do in Villavaquerín (Páramos del Esgueva, Valladolid): 5 places across monuments, nature, activities and curiosities, with a photo and a Google Maps location.

1 Villages · 1 Monuments · 1 Nature · 1 Curiosities · 1 Historical milestones

Towns near Villavaquerín

Spain › Castile and León › Valladolid › Páramos del Esgueva › Villavaquerín

What to see and do in Villavaquerín

Villavaquerín
Village
Villavaquerín is a village of 155 inhabitants in the comarca of the Páramos del Esgueva, formed mainly by the Valladolid part of the natural Cerrato, located in the valley of the Jaramiel stream, at 769 metres above sea level. In the late 9th and early 10th centuries it was fortified with a castle and an underground passage, perhaps where the church of Santa Cecilia now stands, and surrounded by a wall whose last remaining trace, an arch now gone, gives its name to a street in the village. The first document mentioning the town, then called Uilla Bacrin, dates from 1095, with the donation of three plots of land to the church of Santa María la Mayor in Valladolid. Its Gothic church of Santa Cecilia, from the 16th century, has a Herrerian ashlar tower, and the shrine of Nuestra Señora del Prado dates from 1588.
The Gothic church of Santa Cecilia
Monument
A Gothic building raised in ashlar stone in the sixteenth century and remodelled in the seventeenth with Baroque additions; it has three naves and the chevet is covered with elaborately ribbed star vaults.
Uilla Bacrin in the donation of Pedro Ansúrez
Historical milestone
The name appears for the first time in 1095, as Uilla Bacrin, when Count Pedro Ansúrez donated property here to the church; in 1110 Abbot Salto obtained fishing rights and five mills on the Duero.
The procession of San Casiano
Curiosity
Among the village's festivals there survives the procession of San Casiano, a celebration exclusive to Villavaquerín in which a resident in disguise accompanies the cortège, and that is not repeated anywhere else in the valley of the Jaramiel.
The valley of the Jaramiel stream
Nature
Villavaquerín sits at 769 metres in the valley of the Jaramiel stream, a right-bank tributary of the Duero that rises on the Pinzas plateau, in the municipality of Piñel de Arriba, and runs for about 28 kilometres before flowing into the Duero at Tudela de Duero, also passing through Piñel de Abajo, Valbuena de Duero, Castrillo-Tejeriego and Villabáñez. It forms a corridor parallel to the Esgueva valley, hemmed in between limestone uplands that narrow towards its mouth. It has traditionally been used for growing cereals and sugar beet; viticulture was also important, as attested by the underground wine cellars in its villages, along with sheep grazing.