Logbook · 5 places

What to see and do in Colmenarejo

What to see and do in Colmenarejo (Cuenca del Guadarrama, Madrid): 5 places across monuments, nature, activities and curiosities, with a photo and a Google Maps location.

1 Villages · 1 Monuments · 2 Nature · 1 Historical milestones

How far each place is from the centre of Colmenarejo

Reservoir of Valmayor 4 km
Canyon of the Aulencia River 4.8 km

Towns near Colmenarejo

What to see in Galapagar 2 km · 4 places
What to see in Torrelodones 7.1 km · 5 places
What to see in Valdemorillo 7.9 km · 5 places
What to see in Villanueva del Pardillo 8.7 km · 3 places
What to see in Collado Villalba 9.7 km · 4 places
What to see in El Escorial 9.9 km · 5 places
What to see in Hoyo de Manzanares 11 km · 11 places
What to see in Alpedrete 11 km · 5 places

Spain › Community of Madrid › Cuenca del Guadarrama › Colmenarejo

What to see and do in Colmenarejo

Colmenarejo
Village
Colmenarejo is a town of the Community of Madrid, with about 9,600 inhabitants, situated at the foot of the sierra de Guadarrama, at 899 metres above sea level and 37 kilometres from the capital. It looks out over the eastern shore of the Valmayor reservoir, the second largest in capacity in the region, amid holm oak and ash woods. Its origin goes back to the mid-12th century, when Segovian herders created a settlement called “Colmenar de Don Mateo”, which, owing to its small size compared with neighbouring Colmenar Viejo, came to be called Colmenarejo. The territory shifted for centuries between the lordships of Madrid and Segovia. Its parish of Santiago Apóstol, Gothic-Renaissance, became independent from that of Galapagar in 1564; today the town is home to a campus of Charles III University.
Church of Santiago Apóstol de Colmenarejo
Monument
16th-century church with three naves and an Escorial-like air, which separated from the parish of Galapagar in 1564 by a brief of Pope Pius IV at the request of Philip II; it preserves a Renaissance altarpiece dated 1612.
Reservoir of Valmayor
Nature
The Valmayor reservoir, managed by Canal de Isabel II, is the second largest in the Community of Madrid by stored water, after El Atazar. The dam, closed in 1976 across the río Aulencia with a sixty-metre rockfill structure, the tallest of its kind in Spain at the time, stands within the municipality of Valdemorillo, and the reservoir, which stretches twelve kilometres upstream, also floods parts of El Escorial and Colmenarejo, holding 124.4 cubic hectometres over 755 hectares. The Aulencia, with a much smaller flow than the Guadarrama, was chosen for damming because of the width of its valley, its impermeable granite ground and the absence of population centres in the area; even so, the reservoir receives its largest inflows from the Guadarrama itself.
Canyon of the Aulencia River
Nature
The Aulencia's narrow gorge between holm oak woods and grazing pastures dotted with junipers, ash trees and Portuguese oaks, within the Regional Park of the middle course of the River Guadarrama; the path that follows it passes the old El Pilar mine.
Colmenarejo becomes independent from Galapagar
Historical milestone
The place obtained the title of town status and ceased to depend on the district of Galapagar. Its parish had already been detached in 1564 by a brief of Pope Pius IV at the instance of Felipe II, who would stop to hear mass here on his way to El Escorial.