Yanguas

Yanguas has pre-Roman origins, though almost nothing survives from that period beyond fragments of an earthen rampart. After the Reconquest, Alfonso VII of Castile and León repopulated the town, and the earliest written records date from roughly the same era. One of the first documented privileges granted to its residents was exemption from paying tolls at the gates of various Castilian cities — a significant commercial advantage.

That exemption, combined with poor farming land and difficult relations with the local lords, pushed many people toward a different livelihood: the trade of the arrieros, the muleteers who moved goods across the region. The yangüeses became so well known in this role that they appear by name in Chapter XV of the first part of Cervantes's Don Quixote.

During the Middle Ages, Yanguas was the head of its own community of town and territory — the villa y tierra de Yanguas — and by the time of the Floridablanca census it was recorded as a district under the lordship of the Marquis of Aguilar. After the fall of the Ancien Régime, it became a constitutional municipality within Castilla la Vieja, and the 1842 census counted 128 households and 450 residents. Over subsequent decades the municipality grew by absorbing several neighbouring settlements.

The story of the 20th century was one of rural depopulation, worsened by the decline of the Mesta — the great sheep-herding guild — and the general drift away from the countryside. The town appears to be recovering from that long contraction. In 2017, Yanguas was admitted to the association of Los Pueblos Más Bonitos de España, the official network of Spain's most beautiful villages.

The built fabric of Yanguas is notably consistent: stone construction using slate and rubble masonry, timber framing, and rammed earth (tapial), with a scattering of manor houses and a central Plaza Mayor. The whole ensemble was declared a protected historic-artistic site in the 1980s.

The two surviving town gateways — the Puerta del Río and the Puerta de la Villa — are all that remain of the medieval walls, now standing as ornamental arches rather than defensive structures. The castle above the town is also built largely in tapial, with towers and stretches of wall still standing.

The parish church of San Lorenzo is late Gothic in style. Its most remarkable object is the town chest (arqueta), which once held the legal documents of Yanguas. The chest had four locks, each key held by a different alcalde, so that it could only be opened when all were present together. The church also served as the meeting hall of the local council. The Casa Consistorial, the town hall, is a later building that dominates the Plaza Mayor.

Santa María is considered the more important of the two churches. It was the parish of the now-vanished Villa Vieja, and contains a chapel housing the Santo Cristo de la Villa Vieja, separated from the main nave by a large iron grille — a physical expression of the distinction between what belongs to the town and what belongs to the wider community of 25 villages. The church also has a notable Plateresque altarpiece.

The three-arched bridge over the River Cidacos is probably medieval. It was once part of the road to Calahorra and is now pedestrian only. The Torre de San Miguel is a free-standing Romanesque tower — the sole surviving element of a vanished church — and is said to be the only example of Catalan Romanesque style in the entire province of Soria. A small Sacred Art Museum occupies the old parish house and holds religious carvings, a decorated field altar, a Seated Christ, a Romanesque Christ, and various liturgical objects.

Outside the town, a fibreglass replica of a dinosaur footprint found nearby (La Muga) stands at the entrance to the village. Beech woodland lies 8 km away at Diustes, striking in autumn; a major holly reserve, the Acebal de Garagüeta, is about 30 km distant.