Logbook · 4 places

What to see and do in Santa María de la Alameda

What to see and do in Santa María de la Alameda (Sierra Oeste, Madrid): 4 places across monuments, nature, activities and curiosities, with a photo and a Google Maps location.

1 Villages · 2 Monuments · 1 Historical milestones

How far each place is from the centre of Santa María de la Alameda

Railway station of Santa María de la Alameda 3.5 km

Towns near Santa María de la Alameda

Spain › Community of Madrid › Sierra Oeste › Santa María de la Alameda

What to see and do in Santa María de la Alameda

Santa María de la Alameda
Village
Santa María de la Alameda is a municipality of the Community of Madrid spread across small settlements at the foot of the sierra de Guadarrama, its capital at 1,409 metres and with about 1,600 inhabitants; its territory includes the Dehesa de la Cepeda, between Segovia and Ávila. It was probably born as herding hamlets along the Cañada Real Leonesa Oriental; in the 15th century it may have been part of the Vela lordship, and around that time one of the stonemasons' camps for building El Escorial was set up here. In the mid-19th century it had 560 inhabitants. Until the railway arrived, in 1863, whose track crosses the Cofio river by a viaduct, the lack of communications was a permanent problem; the main settlement of the village later grew up around the station.
Railway station of Santa María de la Alameda
Monument
Of the station opened in 1863 with the Madrid–Ávila line, the platform and the two-storey passenger building survive, with a stone plinth and brick-banded rubble masonry; the barrio of La Estación grew up around it. It stands almost six kilometres from the town centre of Santa María de la Alameda, at 1,067 metres above sea level, between the stations of El Pimpollar and Robledo de Chavela, on the double-track electrified line running from Madrid to Hendaye. It was first run by the Compañía del Norte until its nationalisation into RENFE in 1941; today Adif owns the installations and Renfe operates Media Distancia services to Ávila, León, San Sebastián and Palencia, as well as, since 2018, Cercanías Madrid commuter services.
Recondo Bridge over the Cofio River
Monument
A seven-arch railway viaduct that bridges a drop of some fifty metres between the two banks of the Cofio, built when the Madrid-Ávila line was extended and today the most striking piece of engineering in the municipal district.
The arrival of the Northern Railway
Historical milestone
The opening in 1863 of the El Escorial-Ávila stretch of the Northern railway gave the municipality its own station and broke its age-old isolation. A new settlement grew around the platforms, several kilometers from the old village.