Village
Manzanares el Real is a town in the Community of Madrid with 9,648 inhabitants, situated at the foot of La Pedriza, a granite landscape integrated into the national park of the Sierra de Guadarrama, and on the shore of the Santillana reservoir, formed by the River Manzanares. The village was reborn in 1248, when people from Segovia repopulated it during the Reconquista, and after the dispute with the people of Madrid over these lands it came to be called El Real de Manzanares when Alfonso X incorporated it into the Crown. John I ceded it at the end of the 14th century to Pedro González de Mendoza, and with this family it experienced its greatest splendour in the 15th and 16th centuries, when the castle of the Mendozas was built, begun in 1475 over a Romanesque-Mudejar church and considered the best preserved in the region.
Monument
A castle-palace begun in 1475 by the Mendoza family over an old Romanesque-Mudéjar church, with an Isabelline Gothic gallery attributed to Juan Guas and towers topped with balls in the same style; it is the best preserved castle in the Community of Madrid.
Monument
The old castle of Manzanares el Real, known as plaza de Armas, stands at the end of a hill beside the Manzanares river, on the southern slope of La Pedriza, the most important granite formation of the sierra de Guadarrama. The date of its founding is unknown, though it predates the famous new castle of Manzanares el Real, begun in 1475 and located nearby, and it was the first residence of the Mendoza family. Built in Mudéjar style of granite and brick, it forms a precinct of 45 by 37 metres with three cylindrical towers five metres in diameter and a square keep fourteen metres on each side with walls four metres thick. Today it is in ruins, with only two walls still standing within a fenced, landscaped precinct, protected during its archaeological excavation.
Monument
A parish church founded at the beginning of the 14th century under the protection of the first Marquis of Santillana and rebuilt around 1500, with three naves, a pentagonal chancel and a Renaissance portico of eight basket-handle arches; it was declared a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) in December 2021.
Monument
A 16th-century hermitage enlarged in the 17th on a granite outcrop facing La Pedriza; a fire destroyed it in 1769 and it suffered damage again in the Civil War, and it is the only survivor of the seven the municipality once had.
Monument
Opened on 25 February 1993, it brings together three main rooms, two of ethnology and one of archaeology, with tools, pottery and objects donated by local people, as well as sections devoted to cinema and to the town's historic photography.
Monument
A medieval bridge with a single granite arch that crosses the River Manzanares resting directly on the natural rock of the riverbed; the Cañada Real Segoviana crossed here, the drovers' road that runs through the municipal district on its way to the mountain pastures.
Nature
Located on the southern slope of the sierra de Guadarrama, within the municipality of Manzanares el Real, La Pedriza is a large granite batholith formed some 300 million years ago, the largest granite formation in Europe, with about 3,200 hectares of crags, rock walls, boulder fields, streams and meadows shaped over millions of years by erosion. It is one of the most important climbing areas in Spain, with close to a thousand routes of varying difficulty, and also a much-frequented spot for hiking. Declared a natural site of national interest in 1930, it was incorporated in 2013 into the Sierra de Guadarrama National Park, the most extensive protected area in the Community of Madrid, with abundant Mediterranean scrubland and a rich fauna of birds of prey and reptiles.
Nature
A huge slab of pink granite 1,717 metres high that, seen from the south, resembles a medieval helmet; it rises 150 metres above its southern base and its name already appears in the Libro de la montería of Alfonso XI, written around 1350. It was also called Peña del Diezmo, and it is reckoned that the monastery of El Escorial could be carved life-size inside it. The first known ascent was made by Casiano del Prado in 1864. Its south face, a great granite wall, holds historic routes of Madrid climbing, such as Los Higinios, opened in 1944, or La Vikinga and La Valkiria, laid out by the Los Vikingos group in 1966 and 1967. Climbing in La Pedriza calls for a special technique of friction, very different from the more athletic style of other areas.
Nature
The Santillana reservoir, also called that of Manzanares el Real, lies beside the sierra de Guadarrama, between the municipalities of Manzanares el Real and Soto del Real, and forms a sheet of 1,052 hectares with a usable capacity of 91 cubic hectometres on the Manzanares river, whose flow it regulates and in which the Santillana Canal has its source. The old dam dates from 1907, but the current one, of rockfill, 40 metres high and 1,355 metres along its crest, was finished in 1969 and entered service in 1971 after only twelve months of works, doubling the previous storage capacity. Its ash groves are home to a notable colony of white stork, and the reservoir is part of the regional park of the Upper Manzanares Basin.
Nature
The Cabezas de Hierro are two of the most important peaks of the sierra de Guadarrama and the second highest, at 2,379 metres for Cabeza de Hierro Mayor —after Peñalara— and 2,376 for Cabeza de Hierro Menor, 700 metres apart; they form the highest point of the Cuerda Larga and owe their name to the magnetic iron found near the summits. They lie on the boundary between Manzanares el Real, to the south, and Rascafría, to the north; their southern slope, within the Sierra de Guadarrama National Park, is the highest point of the regional park of the Upper Manzanares Basin, with La Pedriza and the Garganta del Manzanares on that side and the Lozoya valley on the northern face. Above 2,000 metres, boulder fields and alpine meadows predominate, and below that, pine forests.
Nature
The Ventisquero de la Condesa is a permanent snowfield of the Sierra de Guadarrama, on the southern slope of the Cuerda Larga, at about 2,000 metres of altitude, within the municipality of Manzanares el Real; tradition points to it as the birthplace of the Manzanares river, at the head of the basin that gives the region its name. It takes its name from Francisca de Silva y Mendoza, countess of Real de Manzanares; it was previously called ventisquero de las Guarramillas. It was worked from the early 17th century to the late 19th: the snow, gathered between May and summer, was carried by cart to Madrid to preserve food and cool drinks, and a small stone wall was built to hold it better. At 625 metres long and 5.3 hectares, it is the largest snowfield on the southern face of the range.
Nature
A rock shelter in La Pedriza with schematic cave paintings attributed to the Bronze Age, more than 3,000 years old; it is one of the few groups of prehistoric art documented in the Madrid mountains.
Curiosity
The castle of the Mendoza family and its surroundings have served as the setting for films such as El Cid, The Fall of the Roman Empire, Alexander the Great, Jeromín and Conan the Barbarian, as well as numerous westerns filmed in the Madrid mountains.
Monument
On 14 June 1982 the Joint Assembly of Deputies —national, senatorial and provincial, chaired by senator José Prat— was constituted in the new castle of Manzanares el Real, and presented the drafting report of the Statute of Autonomy of Madrid, a text that the Assembly of Parliamentarians would unanimously approve on 26 June in the same castle. After its passage through the Cortes was prolonged by the dissolution of the legislature and the October elections, the Statute was approved on 22 February 1983 and signed into law by Juan Carlos I three days later, the signing again held in the castle where it had been drafted. It came into force on 1 March 1983, giving rise to the Community of Madrid.
Activity
With close to a thousand routes opened on granite, La Pedriza is the leading climbing school in the Community of Madrid; the standard route up El Yelmo goes by the Gran Grieta on the north face, while the south wall holds the hardest lines.
Activity
A pilgrimage festival on the weekend of Pentecost in which the image comes down from the hermitage on the granite outcrop to the parish church amid processions and religious ceremonies, ending with a communal meal for the villagers on the meadow by the shrine.
Nature
Las Torres de La Pedriza, at 2,029 metres, are the highest point of La Pedriza and close off the granite cirque of the Pedriza Posterior to the north, at the point where this massif of the Sierra de Guadarrama meets the Cuerda Larga ridge. Its granite crags, of peculiar shapes moulded by wind and water, crown a mountain cornice about 800 metres long running west to east, surrounded by high-mountain shrubs and Scots pines. They offer little interest for climbing, lacking proper routes, and are climbed up easy rock backs without difficulty; their appeal lies more in walking, and they form part of the route known as the Integral de la Pedriza.
Curiosity
A granite formation of 1,292 metres also known as the Cancho del Camposanto, east of the Pedriza Posterior cirque. Tradition marks it as the refuge of the bandits who plagued the mountains in the 19th century and as the place where they threw their victims off the rocks.
Monument
Staffed mountain refuge in the central area of La Pedriza, in the valley of the Arroyo de la Dehesilla, at about 1,200 metres above sea level, on the boundary between the Pedriza Anterior and the Posterior, in Manzanares el Real. Its construction began in 1914, driven by the enthusiasm for mountaineering in the Sierra de Guadarrama and with contributions from King Alfonso XIII, and it was inaugurated on 15 May 1916 as the first refuge of the Real Sociedad Española de Alpinismo Peñalara, to which it still belongs. It bears the name of Francisco Giner de los Ríos, founder of the Institución Libre de Enseñanza. With capacity for about fifty mountaineers, it offers a bar, meals, blankets, running water and guides, and opens at weekends and during holidays. It is reached in about 45 minutes along a marked path from Canto Cochino.
Activity
An open area on the banks of the River Manzanares that acts as the main gateway to La Pedriza: from its car park of some 250 spaces the classic paths set off towards the Charca Verde, the Yelmo and the Giner de los Ríos refuge.
Nature
A pool on the River Manzanares wedged between granite boulders in the western sector of the Pedriza Posterior, its granite bed tinting the water the greenish shade that gives it its name. It is reached on a short walk from Canto Cochino.
Nature
A pass of 1,453 metres that separates the Pedriza Anterior from the Pedriza Posterior and organises the crossing between the two granite labyrinths; the routes linking the Yelmo with the inner cirque of the massif run through it.
Nature
A crag of 1,420 metres whose outline, sculpted by the spheroidal weathering typical of granite, recalls an elephant. It is one of the most frequently cited examples of the animal shapes that weathering has carved into the La Pedriza batholith.
Nature
The cliffs of La Pedriza went from 25 breeding pairs of griffon vulture in 1982 to close to 160 in 2021, the largest concentration in the Region of Madrid; monitoring by forest rangers allowed a hundred chicks to be raised in a single year.
Nature
At 1,727 metres it is the highest point of the Pedriza Anterior, higher even than the Yelmo, and dominates the labyrinth of granite slabs and boulders tumbling down towards the valley of the River Manzanares.
Nature
Granite summit of the Pedriza Posterior, in the sierra de Guadarrama, within the municipality of Manzanares el Real, and one of the natural balconies over the Santillana reservoir and the Mendoza castle; it is reached along marked paths that start from the Canto Cochino recreation area. Also called Pinganillo Grande, it owes its name to the silhouette of its summit, which resembles a perched bird, and it is part of the so-called cuerda de los pinganillos. At 1,549 metres of altitude, it is needle-shaped and rises about 180 metres on its south face and 20 on the north; on its east face there are curious organ-pipe formations with concentrations of crystallised quartz. It is part of the Cuenca Alta del Manzanares regional park, declared a biosphere reserve by Unesco.
Activity
Manzanares celebrates its patron on 14 September, the day of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross: mass in the church of Nuestra Señora de las Nieves, a procession of the image organised by the brotherhood, formerly known as that of the Veracruz, and a public lemonade punch afterwards.
Historical milestone
Tired of the suit between Madrid and Segovia over the pastures of the upper Manzanares, the king reserved the territory for the crown in 1275 and left its use in common for hunting, firewood and livestock. From that ruling came the name Real de Manzanares.
Historical milestone
John I handed over, in the late 14th century, the Real de Manzanares to his steward Pedro González de Mendoza in payment for his services. The grant closed a century of litigation between councils and made the family owner of the whole upper basin of the river.
Food and drink
A lamb stew cooked slowly in a cauldron, the chief dish of a cuisine shaped by the transhumant stock-raising of the upper basin. It is accompanied by the cocido soup perfumed with mint, another recipe rooted in the village.
Food and drink
A shepherds' dish that joins the mountain potato with kid meat in the same cauldron over the fire. It reflects the weight of goat herding in the traditional economy of the surroundings of La Pedriza and the Santillana reservoir.
Food and drink
Rabbit cooked and preserved in a marinade of vinegar and oil flavoured with rosemary, a technique that allowed small game to be kept for weeks without refrigeration. It is also prepared as a caldereta with the same herbs of the hillside.