Maderuelo

Maderuelo was resettled after the Christian reconquest by Count Fernán González. At its medieval peak it supported ten parishes and served as the head of its own Villa and Tierra community. By the late medieval period it was already in decline, losing population to resettlement efforts further south.

Under Franco, the construction of the Linares reservoir submerged the neighbouring municipality of Linares del Arroyo, splitting its former territory between Maderuelo and Montejo de la Vega de la Serrezuela, while its inhabitants were relocated to La Vid in Burgos province.

Maderuelo holds the status of a protected historic ensemble (declared in the BOE, 21 February 1993), and several of its individual monuments carry their own protection orders.

The main gate into the village is the most visible survivor of the medieval walls that once enclosed the town. A second gate, the Puerta del Barrio, also remains, along with sections of the wall itself and a medieval tower. The ruins of the castle are a listed monument in their own right (BOE, 5 May 1949), and the old medieval bridge can still be seen.

Two Romanesque churches stand inside the village. San Miguel, at the centre of town, has a plain apse with a narrow slit window and simple corbels. Santa María mixes dressed stone, rubble masonry, and brick; its south doorway retains original Romanesque saw-tooth mouldings, while the north doorway, now bricked up, shows Mudéjar brick arches.

The Ermita de la Vera Cruz, listed as a monument since 1924, is built mainly in lime-and-stone rubble with some dressed stonework. It once contained a remarkable set of Romanesque paintings in its apse — scenes including the creation of man, the original sin, Christ in Majesty surrounded by the evangelists, angels, the Virgin, and a bishop. In 1947 those paintings were removed and transferred to the Museo del Prado in Madrid, where they remain.