Logbook · 8 places

What to see and do in Pedrezuela

What to see and do in Pedrezuela (Cuenca del Medio Jarama, Madrid): 8 places across monuments, nature, activities and curiosities, with a photo and a Google Maps location.

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

How far each place is from the centre of Pedrezuela

Weir of El Mesto 2.2 km
Reservoir of El Vellón 5.2 km

Towns near Pedrezuela

Spain › Community of Madrid › Cuenca del Medio Jarama › Pedrezuela

What to see and do in Pedrezuela

Pedrezuela
Village
Pedrezuela is a municipality of the Community of Madrid, in the north of the region, 42 kilometres from the capital, with about 6,600 inhabitants and located at 860 metres of altitude, at a historic crossing point of the río Guadalix. It preserves the only original carta puebla (founding charter) of the Community of Madrid, granted in 1331, the church of San Miguel with its Romanesque tower, and the casitos, circular stone shepherd shelters with adobe and straw roofs, similar to Celtiberian castros. The Mesto dam, built in 1859 by convicts to occasionally supply Madrid with water, and the Pedrezuela reservoir, a work of the Canal de Isabel II completed in 1967, complete its hydraulic heritage. Its festivities are celebrated on 29 September, in honour of Saint Michael the Archangel.
Church of San Miguel Arcángel de Pedrezuela
Monument
16th-century parish church of Gothic design built in masonry, with a tower of Romanesque origin housing a spiral staircase. Inside, a wooden carving of Saint Michael depicted in chain mail is venerated.
1331 founding charter of Pedrezuela
Curiosity
On 3 December 1331 the council of Segovia granted a charter of settlement exempting from taxes for ten years anyone who settled here, in order to repopulate the place after the damage caused by the nobles. The village commemorates it every 3 December.
Reservoir of El Vellón
Nature
Completed in 1967 on the Guadalix river for the Canal de Isabel II, it holds back 41 cubic hectometres over 393 hectares behind a double-curvature dam 218 metres long at the crest and 50 metres high, and supplies water to Madrid. It was the first thick double-curvature arch dam used by the Canal de Isabel II, tested at the Engineering laboratory in Lisbon, achieving a saving of almost half the concrete compared with a gravity dam. From the reservoir runs the El Vellón canal, which draws water from a three-tier intake tower and carries it to El Atazar. Despite its name, the dam lies outside the municipality of El Vellón, in Pedrezuela: nearby, the old Molino del Vellón was submerged, where the residents of that village used to go to grind their grain.
Medieval Fair of Pedrezuela
Activity
At the end of June the streets of the old quarter fill with craft stalls, shows and historical re-enactments in a medieval fair that has established itself as the liveliest event in the municipality's calendar.
Weir of El Mesto
Monument
A diversion dam located on the course of the Guadalix river, in the municipal district of Pedrezuela, today disused although still operational. As early as 1859 a smaller weir and canal had been built on the same spot to supplement Madrid's water supply, following the leaks detected at the Pontón de la Oliva; the current, larger weir was inaugurated in 1905 to divert water into the original canal supplying the capital, via the new Guadalix Canal, built at the same time. Since the weir lacked storage capacity and the river's flow dropped sharply in summer, a reservoir was planned upstream but was not built until 1967, the year in which the reservoir initially called El Vellón reservoir, later renamed Pedrezuela reservoir, came into service.
Casitos of Pedrezuela
Curiosity
Shepherds' shelters on a circular plan and some two metres across, closed with a corbelled false dome and covered in earth; Pedrezuela preserves almost a hundred of them, practically the only group of their kind in the Region of Madrid.
The settlement charter of Pedrezuela
Historical milestone
The council of Segovia granted on 3 December 1331 the privilege to resettle a place that the troops of the infante don Juan Manuel had devastated three years earlier, burning the harvests. The original parchment is still kept in an archive.