Village
Soto del Real, which was called Chozas de la Sierra until 1959, is a municipality of the Community of Madrid situated on the southern side of the Sierra de Guadarrama, in the area known as Cuerda Larga, 46 kilometres from the capital. Its territory, elongated from northwest to southeast to take in everything from farmland to mountain pastures, extends between the Santillana reservoir and the 2,119 metres of La Najarra, and lies largely within the Parque Regional de la Cuenca Alta del Manzanares. In the lower, more humid areas, ash trees predominate, forming dehesas rich in wildlife where cattle graze. It has about 9,400 inhabitants. Ash groves, Pyrenean oak woods and a notable stork colony surround its Rosario festivities in August.
Nature
The Regional Park of the Upper Manzanares Basin, created in 1985, is the largest protected natural area in the Community of Madrid, extended to 42,583 hectares. It stretches across the northwest of the region, around the upper course of the Manzanares, on the southern flank of the Sierra de Guadarrama, except for the addition of the Monte de El Pardo and its Soto de Viñuelas appendage, already on the Southern Sub-Plateau. It is home to pine groves, holm oak woods, juniper stands, rockrose scrub and Pyrenean oak woods, as well as wetlands. Unesco declared it a Biosphere Reserve in 1992, and the diploma was presented on 15 February 1993. Almost the entire small municipal area of Soto del Real, which runs from the Santillana reservoir to the summit of La Najarra, lies within its boundaries.
Nature
A summit of 2,119 metres and the highest point of the municipal area of Soto del Real, located at the eastern end of the Cuerda Larga, a ridge that, within the Sierra de Guadarrama National Park, declared in 2013, closes off the upper Manzanares valley to the north and links up with the Sierra de la Morcuera. Its southern slope is covered with Scots pine up to 1,800 metres, while the northern slope, steeper, is home to colonies of vultures and specimens of Iberian ibex. Near the summit there is an unstaffed refuge hut, a former fire-watch post. At the foot of the mountain runs the Guadarrama railway tunnel, 28 kilometres long, the longest in Spain, on the Madrid-Valladolid high-speed line.
Monument
It crosses the Chozas stream in the middle of the old town and connects the Plaza de la Villa with the church. It is built of granite masonry, with a single slightly pointed arch and a humpbacked profile typical of models from the 12th to the 15th centuries.
Monument
Built in the second half of the 16th century over an earlier church of which only the tower survives; the central nave was not completed until the 18th century. It holds a high altarpiece carved in 1749 in unpainted walnut.
Monument
Built in 1954 with a contribution from Bishop Casimiro Morcillo, a native of the village, it was raised in granite using the boulders of the site as part of its own walls. The image of the Virgin is carried up to it every 15 August.
Activity
A circular path of some 5.3 kilometres that rings the town, linking the ash tree pastures, the streams and the old drovers' roads of the municipal district, all of it within the Cuenca Alta del Manzanares Regional Park.
Nature
The Cañada Real Segoviana is a drovers' road of about 500 kilometres that crosses the centre of the Iberian Peninsula, from the mountains around Neila, between Burgos and Soria, to Granja de Torrehermosa, in the province of Badajoz. As it passes through Burgos, Segovia, Madrid, Toledo, Ciudad Real and Badajoz, it takes different local names, such as cañada de Merinas or cordel de ganados. Within the municipality of Soto del Real it runs west of the town centre, keeping the legal width of the cañadas reales, ninety Castilian varas, about 75 metres, a legacy of the centuries in which it supported the transhumance of merino sheep between the pastures of the north and those of the south.
Nature
The product of centuries of livestock use, the ash groves surrounding the town form one of the finest examples of ash pasture in the Madrid sierra and draw large numbers of white storks every spring.
Historical milestone
Felipe II, who reigned between 1556 and 1598, granted the title of town to the place called Chozas, today Soto del Real, settled since the 10th and 11th centuries by shepherds who came from lands around Segovia; the name referred to the huts those herders built at the foot of the sierra.
Historical milestone
The residents voted between keeping the historic Chozas de la Sierra, Alameda de la Sierra or Soto del Real, and the last won. The new name, adopted in 1959, alludes to the groves of the surroundings and to the old Real de Manzanares to which it belonged.
Food and drink
The spring festival of La Maya is accompanied by omelettes, rice pudding and peaches in syrup, a simple menu from the home larder that the residents share in the open air while traditional music plays.
Food and drink
The festivities of Nuestra Señora del Rosario close with chocolate and churros for the whole village, after a communal meal of potatoes washed down with lemonade. The potato is the recurring ingredient of the local festive calendar.