Comprehensive information and links about Spain Valladolid

Valladolid For the city in Mexico, see Valladolid, Yucatán. For the municipality in the Philippines, see Valladolid, Negros Occidental., which name comes from the Arabic phrase for "land of the father" (Balad-Al-Walid), is an industrial city in central Spain, upon the Rio Pisuerga. It is the capital of the province of Valladolid and of the autonomous community of Castile-Leon. As of the 2004 census, the population of the city of Valladolid proper was 321.713, and the population of the entire urban area was estimated to be near 400.000.

Valladolid was captured from the Moors in the 10th century; by the 15th century it was the residence of the kings of Castile and remained the capital of the Spain until 1561, when Philip II moved the capital to Madrid. (It became the capital once again from 1600 to 1606.)

The city (called "Pucela" by its inhabitants) nonetheless boasts few architectural manifestations of its former glory. Some monuments include the unfinished cathedral, the church of Santa Maria la Antigua, the Plaza Mayor (the template for that of Madrid and of future plazas in the Spanish-speaking world), the National Sculpture Museum which includes Spain's greatest collections of polychrome wood sculptures, and the Faculty of Law of the University of Valladolid, whose facade is one of the few surviving works by Narciso Tomei, the same artist who did the transparente in Toledo Cathedral. The Museum of the Cience is next to river Pisuerga. The only surviving house of Miguel de Cervantes is located in Valladolid. Although unfinished, Cathedral of Valladolid was designed by Juan de Herrera, architect of El Escorial.

Valladolid is an economic motor of the autonomous community, having an especially important automobile industry. There is an airport at nearby Villanubla.

i) are reputed to speak the purest Castilian of all of Spain, a reputation similar to that of Tours or Aberdeen, Scotland. However, this widespread belief is merely a myth, given that the speech of Valladolid is actually characterized by such non-standard features as leísmo no admitido (the use of pronoun i, "Are you leaving your jacket here?"). Also, yeísmo (the merging of the palatal lateral phoneme spelled i) is nowadays widespread in Valladolid city especially among the younger generations.

Valladolid is also the city in which Christopher Columbus died in 1506.