Logbook · 4 places

What to see and do in Bustarviejo

What to see and do in Bustarviejo (Sierra Norte, Madrid): 4 places across monuments, nature, activities and curiosities, with a photo and a Google Maps location.

1 Villages · 1 Monuments · 1 Curiosities · 1 Historical milestones

How far each place is from the centre of Bustarviejo

Tower of la Mina de Bustarviejo 2 km
Penal Detachment of Bustarviejo 2.2 km

Towns near Bustarviejo

Spain › Community of Madrid › Sierra Norte › Bustarviejo

What to see and do in Bustarviejo

Bustarviejo
Village
Bustarviejo is a municipality of the Community of Madrid, set on the slopes of the sierra de Guadarrama, on its southern side, at 1,222 metres and about 60 kilometres from the capital; it is one of the highest villages of the Sierra Norte and has around 2,900 inhabitants. Its name is said to come from the Latin bos-stare, 'pasture or grazing ground for oxen', since documents from 1324 and 1352 record disputes over the lands where the hamlet's oxen grazed, which is why its coat of arms displays two oxen. A prosperous town in earlier times, it gradually lost importance until being rediscovered as a summer resort, which in the last decades of the 20th century brought a boom in chalets as second homes. Its granite church of the Purísima Concepción dates from the 16th century, and at the Cuesta de la Plata silver was mined for centuries.
Tower of la Mina de Bustarviejo
Monument
A cylindrical masonry tower that housed the mill where ore was crushed from the silver mine found in the 15th century on the Cuesta de la Plata and worked on and off until the late 19th century; it has been a Monumento Histórico-Artístico (Spain's heritage designation in force between 1931 and 1985) since 1983.
Penal Detachment of Bustarviejo
Curiosity
The Bustarviejo penal detachment, known locally as Los Barracones, was a Francoist forced-labour camp that operated from 9 November 1944 to 1952, 1.5 kilometres from the village, on the slopes of the sierra de Guadarrama; it was one of nine camps the dictatorship set up around Madrid to complete the direct Madrid-Burgos railway, begun in 1920. Built for 250 prisoners, it housed as many as 2,000 at first; close to a thousand political prisoners, in conditions of semi-slavery, built the La Gargüera viaduct, two tunnels and the Bustarviejo-Valdemanco station. Alongside the railway line, the remains of the camp and its barracks are preserved today; it was recognised as a Lugar de Memoria Democrática (Spain's official designation for sites of memory of Francoist repression) in 2026.
Opening of the Bustarviejo penal camp
Historical milestone
The Bustarviejo penal detachment, known locally as Los Barracones, was a Francoist forced-labour camp 1.5 kilometres from the village, on the slopes of the Sierra de Guadarrama. The camp opened on 9 November 1944, operating until 1952, and at its outset held as many as 2,000 prisoners. An average of about a hundred political prisoners, and to a lesser extent common criminals, built the La Gargüera viaduct here, two tunnels and the station, as part of the works for the direct Madrid-Burgos railway. The contractor Hermanos Nicolás Gómez benefited from the system of sentence remission through labour, under conditions of semi-slavery. Its barracks are the only Francoist penal detachment still standing in Spain, and it was recognized as a Lugar de Memoria Democrática (site of democratic memory) in 2026.