Village
Cercedilla is a town of Madrid with about 7,800 inhabitants situated deep in the sierra de Guadarrama, 57 kilometres from the capital and surrounded by mountains such as the Siete Picos, the Bola del Mundo and La Peñota. It was born as a place of passage and lodging on the old Roman road that linked Titulcia with Segovia, the Via Antonina, of which four bridges are still preserved in good condition on the way to the valley and the Fuenfría pass. From its station runs the historic narrow-gauge Ferrocarril Eléctrico del Guadarrama, which climbs to the Navacerrada pass and, after a tunnel towards the Segovian slope, reaches the Cotos pass, today a tourist line of Cercanías Madrid. Charles V hunted in its forests on several occasions during the 16th century. It lies at 1,214 metres above sea level.
Nature
The Sierra de Guadarrama National Park, declared by Law 7/2013, protects high Mediterranean mountains shared between Madrid and Segovia, in Castile and León; Cercedilla is one of the fifteen Madrid municipalities that contribute territory to it. It is the second most recently created Spanish national park, after Sierra de las Nieves, and the fourth largest; in 2015, with almost three million visitors, it was the second most visited in Spain. It protects eleven high-mountain ecosystems, with more than 1,280 species, thirteen of them endangered. Among the vegetation, Scots pine, Pyrenean oak and holm oak stand out, and among the fauna, which accounts for 45% of Spain's total, the Iberian wolf, wild goats and large birds of prey such as the Spanish imperial eagle.
Monument
A Roman road that linked Segovia with Miaccum, present-day Collado Mediano, and with Toledo, crossing the sierra de Guadarrama through the valle and puerto de la Fuenfría to the valle de Valsaín. It dates from the time of the emperor Vespasian, between the years 69 and 79, although the surface preserved today largely corresponds to the thorough overhaul ordered by Philip V in 1722. On its Segovian stretch the route is straight, with a gradient of around ten per cent, features that helped the archaeologist Antonio Blázquez, well acquainted with the sierra de Guadarrama, correctly establish its Roman origin.
Monument
Single-arched bridge over the river of La Venta, in the Fuenfría valley, long held to be Roman; today it is attributed, like the Reajo and Enmedio bridges, to the 18th-century Bourbon road.
Nature
Granite ridge of rounded summits between the Fuenfría and Navacerrada passes; its geodesic marker reaches 2,138 metres and the southern side, that of Cercedilla, is covered by an extensive Scots pine forest.
Activity
Path waymarked in 1926 by Eduard Schmid Weikan, warden of the Fuenfría refuge, to link that shelter of the Real Sociedad Española de Alpinismo Peñalara with the chalet at the Navacerrada pass, skirting the Siete Picos.
Activity
Inaugurated on 12 July 1923 in the presence of Alfonso XIII, it climbs from Cercedilla to Cotos over a height difference of 719 metres; it is the only metre-gauge line on the Adif network and is still electrified at 1,500 volts direct current.
Nature
A mountain pass crossing the sierra de Guadarrama and linking the provinces of Segovia and Madrid, at 1,796 metres above sea level, between the sierra de la Mujer Muerta to the west and Siete Picos to the east. The road runs from the Dehesas de Cercedilla, in the Fuenfría valley, to the pass and on to Segovia, and it is also joined there by the Carretera de la República, the Cordel de Santillana and the Calle Alta forest track. The pass originally stood about five metres higher; it was lowered around 1720 to ease the road built up under Philip V, which linked La Granja with Madrid and was for centuries the main route across the Guadarrama, before traffic shifted to Navacerrada. Today it is used only for sport and is frequented by hikers.
Curiosity
The Hospital de la Fuenfría, today a medium-stay centre of the Madrid Health Service, opened on 1 December 1921 as a sanatorium for tuberculosis, designed by the architect Antonio Palacios and initially fitted with ninety beds. During its first, private phase, between 1920 and 1936, it operated as the Hotel-Sanatorio de la Fuenfría, dedicated to patients with pulmonary tuberculosis; in the Civil War it served as a medical-surgical centre for the wounded, although the closeness of the front forced the evacuation of the patients. In 1950 it was set up as the Fuenfría Sanatorium Foundation, funded by the Labour Mutual Societies, and came to have 422 beds before passing, in the 1980s, to the National Health Institute. It is today the only healthcare centre located within a national park.
Monument
One of the small ashlar bridges that mark the route of Way XXIV of the Antonine Itinerary towards the puerto de la Fuenfría, alongside those of El Reajo, La Venta, El Descalzo and Matalasnos; the group was declared historic-artistic and archaeological in 1983. It is part of the Roman road that, crossing the sierra de Guadarrama through the Fuenfría valley, linked Segovia with Miaccum, present-day Collado Mediano, and with Toledo. The structure is dated to the reign of the emperor Vespasian, between the years 69 and 79 AD, although it was greatly altered by the major works Philip V ordered carried out in 1722.
Nature
A Scots pine almost two hundred years old, declared a notable tree of the Region of Madrid: in 1924 the publisher Nicolás María Urgoiti bought the tree and girdled it with a chain bearing the legend "To his dear memory 1840-1924", in memory of his father.
Monument
Opened on 1 June 2014 in a restored building on the main square, it brings together trophies and documents of the first Spanish alpine skier to win an Olympic gold, on 13 February 1972 in Sapporo, and runs through the history of skiing in Spain.
Historical milestone
Alfonso XIII and Queen Victoria Eugenia presided over the entry into service of the narrow-gauge electric train that linked Cercedilla with the pass of Navacerrada. The line was extended to Los Cotos in 1964 and is still running.