Traditionally seen as one Spain’s most conservative cities, historic Valladolid is reinventing itself as a modern metropolis of great food and culture, making it perfect for a weekend break…
Ask any Spaniard what Valladolid is like and most likely he will raise his eyebrows. It used to be nicknamed ‘Fachadolid’, for being the heart of Spanish fascism, so it is hardly surprising that it was one of the very last cities in Spain to take down its bronze statue of Franco (in 2005). Rumour has it that its residents speak the purest Castillian in Spain, but also that they tend to be rather snobbish – one out of three apparently claims to have hidalgo (noble) blood!
You can understand though why the people of Valladolid feel proud of their city. In terms of Spanish history, it is a hugely important place. Twice the royal capital of Spain, Felipe II was born here in 1527, Columbus died here in 1506 and Cervantes wrote the first part of Don Quixote in 1605 from a little house above a noisy tavern next to the city’s River Pisuerga. Given the city’s reputation for snobbery, Cervantes must have found plenty to inspire him here when he wrote his masterpiece about a retired country gentleman obsessed with chivalry and the aristocracy.
Named by the Moors Belad-Walid (Land of the Governor), it sits right in the heart of Spain’s meseta, in the bread basket of Castile and Léon, a fact that is obvious the minute you arrive if you do as I did, flying direct from London to Valladolid Airport, situated conveniently just 15 minutes’ drive outside the city. I landed to a view of unrelentingly flat cereal fields stacked with hay bales against a blue sky scudded with high white clouds.
The city is easily accessible too from Madrid’s Barajas Airport, which is just under an hour away thanks to the new AVE high-speed train connection. Launched in 2008, it whooshes through a landscape of golden cornfields and green vineyards.
Valladolid’s heart is the vast Plaza Mayor, unmissable for its size and the striking red paint of the restored arcaded buildings around it, from which spill café tables and plenty of al fresco liveliness. This magnificent square, commissioned by the Catholic Kings Felipe and Isabel who were married in the city in 1492, is one of the grandest in Spain and was the first of its kind. It was the inspiration for Madrid’s Plaza Mayor and the model for countless squares in South America during Spain’s Golden Age. Overlooking it all is the mainly Gothic cathedral and the city university whose extravagant Baroque façade is considered to be one of the best examples in Spain.
If Valladolid sounds a rather sober place, think again, this is the city that holds one of Spain’s major international film festivals each October. Here you can enjoy art, great food and wine – four major wine denominations (Rueda, Toro, Castila y Léon and Ribera del Duero) are within easy reach. The best restaurants are to be found in the narrow streets off the Plaza Mayor, where you will also find dozens of lively tapas bars packed with students from the university.
The city offers a great mix of traditional and new cuisine: for the former the best place is La Parrilla de San Lorenzo (Calle Pedro Nino 1), probably Valladolid's most atmospheric restaurant in the basement of a former monastery, with antiques and murals to match, where roast suckling pig, lamb and kid are specialities. For the latter, El Trigo (Calle Tintes 8), which opened in 2007, offers a new take on Spanish classics served in nueva cocina style.
Most of the streets are pedestrianised, making Valladolid an eminently walkable city, and all its great museums and monuments are within a 15-minute stroll of the Plaza Mayor. There is plenty to feast your eyes on as you amble too. In the last few years, the city authorities have commissioned artworks, ceramic murals and sculpture, making Valladolid a hotbed for street art, with over fifty new works by more than thirty Spanish and foreign sculptors on permanent display all over town.
Just north of the Plaza Mayor is the Museo Patio Herreriano, a perfect example of what Valladolid is proving itself so good at – the fusion of the old with the new. An imaginative museum of 20th and 21st century Spanish art, it has been transformed from a former convent. Originally built of white stone with a cloister, a white cement extension has added a patina of cool and an airy modern restaurant. Inside is a great selection of works by Miró, Tapies and Dalí, plus a host of lesser-known artists, including surrealist José Caballero and the Basque sculptor Eduardo Chillida.
The city’s newest museum, though, exhibits a very different type of art and only opened in its new restored shape in September. It is the Museo Nacional Colegio de San Gregorio, created again from a former religious building, and boasting Spain’s most impressive group of sculptures and paintings from the 13th and 18th centuries, periods when Castile was an artistic centre, with Flemish, German and Italian artists collaborating to produce some extraordinarily dramatic and realistic artworks.
Anyone who has read Don Quixote will be fascinated to visit the Casa de Cervantes, where the author spent the last years of his life and wrote part of this great work. The rooms have been restored to exactly as they would have been and you can gaze at the fine ebony writing desk where he worked, and a sideroom with Moorish rugs and cushions, which Cervantes apparently used for romantic assignations.
The main DO for the area is Rueda, which specialises in white wines based on the verdejo grape. A short distance outside Valladolid is a fascinating winery run by the Yllera family, who have been involved in winemaking for six generations. “My father used to go from farm to farm selling his wine from heavy leather botas,” (bags made from goat skin) youngest son and marketing director Marco Yllera tells me.
Quite aside from the opportunity to sample some of the the group’s 20 wines here, it is worth a visit for what lies beneath the winery: an underground Mudéjar-style cellar which dates from the 15th century with several kilometres of the original brick-built arching tunnels used in Moorish times. It is now used as the cellar for the group’s prize-winning sparkling wine Cantosan and reservas and for its spectacular underground dining room. Here, for the princely sum of six euros, you can enjoy a wine tasting accompanied by tapas of local ham, manchego cheeses and olives – delicious! And a meal the wine-loving Don Quixote would heartily have approved of!
Further information
Getting there
Travel to Valladolid with Ryanair from Stansted or fly to Madrid and take the AVE high-speed train from Chamartin Station.
Wine tours
For cellar tours at Yllera, Rueda: visit www.grupoyllera.com
Tourist information
For more information, contact the Spanish Tourist Office on 0207 486 8077 or at www.spain.info/uk