Villadiego

Villadiego was founded by Count Diego Rodríguez Porcelos, lord of Amaya. For several decades straddling the late 18th and early 19th centuries, from 1785 to 1833, it served as the head of its own judicial district.

By the time of the Floridablanca Census of 1787, Villadiego had the status of a villa with a mayor and seigneurial jurisdiction, its lord being the Duke of Frías. It was also the head of the Partido de Villadiego within the Intendencia de Burgos — an administrative territory that covered a wide sweep of the surrounding countryside. That territory was organised into eight rural cuadrillas, or sub-districts: Amaya, Cañizal, Condado, Odra, Olmos, Tozo, Sandoval, and Valdelucio, together containing scores of villages, hamlets, farms, a roadside inn, and at least one abandoned settlement, as well as Villadiego's own jurisdiction of a further villa, ten villages, and a barrio.

The municipal boundaries shifted considerably over the following two centuries. Between the censuses of 1857 and its predecessor, Tobar and Barrios de Villadiego broke away as independent municipalities, while Boada de Villadiego and Tablada de Villadiego were absorbed in. A major expansion came between 1970 and the previous census, when several surrounding municipalities merged into Villadiego, including Arenillas de Villadiego, Barrios de Villadiego, Olmos de la Picaza, Villalbilla de Villadiego, Villanueva de Puerta, Villusto, and part of the dissolved Villarmentero. A further round of mergers between 1981 and 1970 added Acedillo, Coculina, Sandoval de la Reina, Tapia, Los Valcárceres, Villahizán de Treviño, Villanueva de Odra, and Villavedón. The result is a modern municipality that encompasses a large number of small settlements across the surrounding plain and hills.

Villadiego's historic core was declared a protected ensemble — a Bien de Interés Cultural in the category of conjunto histórico — on 29 December 1994. Its layout is a textbook example of medieval town planning: streets and buildings radiating from a central nucleus.

The heart of the town is the Plaza Mayor, a fully arcaded square whose most striking feature is its doubled colonnades. At its centre stands a statue of Fray Enrique Flórez, cast in 1906 by the sculptor Aniceto Marinas. The square itself was remodelled in 2005. You reach it from the north through the Arco de la Cárcel, coming along the Calle de la Vega, which runs beside the old Jewish quarter.

The Arco de la Cárcel was originally the main gate into the town — the most important of four gates that once existed — and it is the only one still standing. Built in the Renaissance style and commissioned by the Velasco family, lords of the villa, it later served as a prison during the 16th and 17th centuries. Today it houses a painting museum. Together with the adjoining walls of the Augustinian convent, it forms the most substantial surviving remnant of the old town wall.

Other civil monuments include the Palacio de los Velasco, also known as the Palace of the Constables of Castile, several notable historic houses — the Casa de Porras, Varona, Bustillo, Santa Cruz, and Borja — a medieval bridge over the river Brullés, an artesian well, and a bullring built in 1957.

For religious architecture, the Church of San Lorenzo is the most ancient, with Romanesque origins though largely rebuilt in Gothic style across the 13th and 14th centuries. The Church of Santa María is a Gothic building from the 15th century. The Convent of San Miguel de los Ángeles has a Gothic church dating from the 16th century, and there is also a small chapel, the Ermita del Cristo, from the 18th century.