Villasana de Mena

A medieval trading town on the Camino de Santiago in Bizkaia, where a Romanesque-Gothic bridge still spans the Cadagua river beside a walled centre that has anchored this corner of the Basque Country since 1199.

A medieval hill town in Álava where a perfectly preserved three-street layout, a parish church, a sanctuary, and fragments of old walls tell a story stretching from prehistoric caves to the counts of Ayala.

A mountain town in northern Burgos with more listed monuments than anywhere else in the province outside the capital, towers, palaces, and fortified houses rising above the river Trueba.

A walled city on the ancient wool road from Castile to the sea, Orduña stands in Bizkaia as a strategic mountain gateway whose commercial and defensive past is written into every stone of its historic centre.

The former seat of the powerful Velasco lords, Medina de Pomar rises above the Las Merindades comarca of Burgos with a fortified castle-museum, a seven-century-old Clarisas monastery, and a medieval old town declared a national Historic-Artistic Monument.

A small Burgos village whose entire historic centre has been declared a protected monument, its coats of arms, Gothic church, and fortified family towers tracing the deep roots of a Castilian noble lineage.

A Cantabrian market town where a hilltop sanctuary dedicated to the patron of the entire region watches over Gothic churches, old ironworks, and cobblestoned mountain streets.

A seafront town in Cantabria where a Gothic castle overlooks the harbour, backed by cave paintings, Roman ruins, and a medieval history as Castile's first maritime town.

A Basque port town on the Nervión estuary, home to the world's oldest transporter bridge and a medieval old quarter whose commercial history stretches back to the wool and iron trades of the Middle Ages.