Village
Colmenar Viejo is a town of about 58,700 inhabitants at the foot of the Sierra de Guadarrama, in the third largest municipal area of the Community of Madrid after the capital and Aranjuez. Its name recalls the old beekeeper who, according to tradition, offered lodging to travellers going from Alcalá de Henares to Segovia. The traditional working of granite and cattle and horse farming have shaped its dehesa landscape, with the Dehesa de Navalvillar, of great richness in fauna and flora, protected by municipal ordinances. Until its separation in 1991, Tres Cantos was part of its territory. It preserves the Gothic basilica of la Asunción, with a Renaissance altarpiece from 1566, and celebrates its cattle-raising tradition every January at the festival of La Vaquilla.
Monument
A Gothic church of granite worked in local quarries, with a slender bell tower and a Plateresque high altarpiece made between 1566 and 1579; since July 2009 it has housed the town's Museum of Sacred Art in the upper choir and the tower.
Monument
The sanctuary of Nuestra Señora de los Remedios, patron saint of Colmenar Viejo, stands about four kilometres from the town centre, on the road to Guadalix de la Sierra. The present building, raised in the 14th century, enlarged in the 17th and refurbished in the 18th, holds the small image of the Virgin seated on a throne with the Child on her left knee, revealed in 1914 when the earlier “dressed” image that had concealed it was restored. It is the centre of an archaeological site: it preserves a pillar with Roman inscriptions, and works carried out in 1969 brought to light remains of the Visigothic necropolis of Remedios nearby. Before the entrance stands a portico from the old Hospital for the Poor of Colmenar Viejo, dating from the 16th century, brought there in the 1940s; it also served as a location for the film El Cid (1961).
Monument
A hermitage documented at least from the 16th century on the road to Hoyo de Manzanares, of plain granite construction, with a round-arched doorway made of the large voussoirs characteristic of mountain stonework.
Monument
A medieval bridge of granite ashlar over the upper course of the Manzanares river, beside the M-618 road, within the Regional Park of the Upper Manzanares Basin, next to the flour mills and fulling mills of El Grajal, documented between the 17th and 19th centuries. It was built during the Muslim domination, between the 9th and 11th centuries, as part of an Andalusi military road linking Talamanca de Jarama with the Tiétar valley and connecting defensive watchtowers against Christian incursions. It rests on a single round arch of 10 metres, with a deck 3.34 metres wide —six rassasi cubits, a measurement typical of Islamic bridges— and a humped roadway; it was restored in the 18th century. Upstream stands the El Navallar power station, inaugurated by Alfonso XIII in 1908.
Nature
The Navalvillar site is an early medieval settlement excavated in the dehesa of Navalvillar, in the municipality of Colmenar Viejo, an area of the sierra de Guadarrama sheltered by the cerro de San Pedro that has been a place of settlement since antiquity. Numerous Visigothic dwellings of the 6th and 7th centuries have been found there, with auxiliary structures, which survived even after the Arab conquest of the peninsula in the 8th century, along with nearby metal mines; the find of a dirham from the year 710 points to one of the oldest known houses of the Muslim period in the region. Having been municipal property since at least the 16th century has allowed its archaeological remains to be better preserved than in other parts of the municipality, which have been more altered by human activity.
Nature
A cemetery of the 6th and 7th centuries with graves cut into the rock and cists of granite slabs, from which glass unguentaria were recovered; it documents a Visigothic settlement several centuries earlier than the founding of the town.
Nature
The dehesa of Navalvillar, on the foothills of the sierra de Guadarrama and sheltered to the north by the cerro de San Pedro, has recorded references since the 11th century, when King Alfonso X is said to have hunted bears in its grounds. It preserves remains of Visigothic dwellings of the 6th and 7th centuries, which survived after the Arab conquest of the 8th century, and old metal mines, among them one of silver and copper now flooded. A communal dehesa of 1,072 hectares of ash trees and holm oaks protected by municipal ordinance, it has been municipal property since at least the 16th century, which allowed its archaeological remains to be preserved. Between the 1950s and the 1980s it served as a set for more than two hundred film shoots, among them Spartacus, El Cid and numerous spaghetti westerns.
Nature
An isolated hill 1,425 metres high in the sierra de Guadarrama, between the municipalities of Colmenar Viejo, Guadalix de la Sierra and Pedrezuela. Owing to its character as an island mountain, separated from the main range of the sierra, it offers a very wide viewpoint: to the north and west the Cuerda Larga and the sierra de la Morcuera can be seen, and to the south, the skyline of Madrid. In summer its sparse vegetation gives it a characteristic yellowish colour. It is of pre-Hercynian origin, formed mainly of gneiss, whose erosion has enriched the soils of the dehesa of Navalvillar, a protected area on its southern slope. Only the M-625 road, between Colmenar Viejo and Guadalix, crosses it. On its summit there once stood a chapel dedicated to Saint Peter.
Activity
La Fiesta de la Vaquilla is celebrated in Colmenar Viejo on the last Saturday of January, after moving in 2016 from the traditional 2 February by popular vote. Twenty-five vaquillas, frame structures bearing names such as Arrimadita or Relamida, parade through the streets each accompanied by its mayoral, its vaquilleros and its talegueros, with colourful costumes often handed down from generation to generation, until they converge on the village square, where they mimic charging amid dancing and decorations. On returning to the starting point, the death of each vaquilla is staged with three shots fired into the air, and a lemonade sangria symbolising its blood is handed out among those present, along with rosquillas typical of the day. It has been declared a Fiesta de Interés Turístico Nacional (National Tourist Interest Festival) since 1986.
Nature
A 6th- and 7th-century burial ground discovered in 1969 during works at the hermitage, with graves cut into the rock. It was not excavated until 1999 and in 2003 it entered the Region of Madrid's programme of visitable archaeological sites.
Nature
A 7th-century rural settlement excavated in the Navalvillar pasture, where in 2008 a forge came to light documenting its inhabitants' ironworking. It joined the Region of Madrid's network of visitable archaeological sites in 2012.
Monument
Carved between 1566 and 1579 in polychrome wood, it is one of the great pieces of Plateresque Renaissance work in the Madrid region; its central bay culminates in the scene of the Assumption of the Virgin, to whom the Colmenar church is dedicated.
Monument
Opened in July 2009, it occupies the bell tower and the choir of the basilica of the Assumption. It brings together liturgical pieces from various periods and Visigothic items that came to light in 1969 during works at the hermitage of Los Remedios.
Activity
Every 2 May several young girls, dressed in inherited petticoats and Manila shawls, stand motionless and silent at altars covered with flowers gathered the day before, in a tradition of pagan roots that welcomes in spring. Beside them, other similarly dressed girls ask passers-by, brush and tray in hand, "para la maya, para la maya, que es bonita y galana." Although girls from one to thirteen years old may take part, it is usual for the mayas to be between thirteen and fourteen. In 2016 a photo report on the festival came second in the World Press Photo contest, People category. A Fiesta of Regional Tourist Interest (Spain's regional tourism-interest designation) since 2005, it was declared a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) in 2023.
Monument
The Puente del Batán, also called the Puente Nuevo, crosses the upper course of the Manzanares on the old road from Alcalá de Henares to Segovia, within the Regional Park of the Upper Manzanares Basin, next to kilometre 39 of the road linking Colmenar Viejo with Cerceda. A branch of the Segovian Cañada Real, a drove road of some 500 kilometres between Burgos and Badajoz, crosses it. Despite the popular attribution to Roman times, it is of medieval construction; it takes its name from a 17th-century fulling mill built upstream, although since the 16th century it has also been known as the Puente Nuevo, perhaps due to some remodelling after a flood, such as that of 1680, which forced it to be rebuilt in 1681. It is founded on the rock with a single round granite arch of 10.5 metres. It was restored together with the fulling mill in 2014.
Monument
A water-powered complex beside the Manzanares documented since 1546 and in full operation by 1605. Its flour mills and fulling mills supplied the 17th- and 18th-century textile industry making frieze and sackcloth; today it lies within an Integral Nature Reserve zone.
Curiosity
The Lega-Michelena studios, later Tablada, operated in the Navalvillar pasture, where Spartacus, El Cid and Sergio Leone's Dollars trilogy were filmed. The Western town stood until 1973, when it was pulled down to build a helicopter base.
Monument
It occupies a 17th-century building whose wine press and cellar, the oldest part of the house, are already documented in the 18th century and still hold the great wine jars of the period, alongside the rooms devoted to the town's history.
Monument
Its first storey was built in the mid-16th century and stands out for a monumental doorway whose dimensions were calculated to let through the processional images that left the church during Semana Santa.
Monument
More than eighty blocks of rock of different geological origins are displayed outdoors on pedestals, each with a label written by CSIC specialists; it works as an open-air stone catalogue of the sierra.
Nature
The municipal district preserves a wide mosaic of ash and holm oak pastures, the historic grazing of the cattle that made the town famous for its livestock. Eight waymarked routes, collected in a Region of Madrid guide, run through them, linking drinking troughs, stone walls and Visigothic sites.
Nature
A Hispano-Visigothic rural settlement given over to sheep farming, in use during the 6th and 7th centuries and reoccupied in the Middle Ages; the excavations carried out between 1981 and 1990 brought to light dwellings, stables and stores in the middle of the pasture.
Historical milestone
Ferdinand the Catholic signed in 1504 the privilege that emancipated Colmenar from the jurisdiction of Manzanares el Real, until then the seigneury's only town. The new municipality soon became the economic and administrative center of the comarca.
Historical milestone
Beside the chapel of the patron saint a cemetery cut into the rock appeared in 1969, of the 6th and 7th centuries, with about ten burials. It forms part, with the settlements of Navalvillar and Navalahija, of the region's network of visitable sites.
Food and drink
A Protected Geographical Indication covering beef from cattle raised extensively in the mountain dehesas, with the regulating council based in the municipality. A good part of the local cattle stock is destined for this production.
Food and drink
A sheep breed native to the municipality, adapted to the mountain pasture and today in danger of extinction, with fewer than ten thousand head recorded at the beginning of this century. From it come the milk and the meat of the traditional local stock-raising.
Food and drink
The district belongs to the El Molar subzone of the Vinos de Madrid Designation of Origin, the most northerly and the last to be added, which brings together a dozen municipalities at the foot of the sierra de Guadarrama.