Urueña – a book town – BNS Global News

Urueña is a city and a municipality located in the province of Valladolid, Castile and León, Spain.

Since 2014 the city has been a part of the network “The most beautiful villages of Spain“.

It is member of the I.O.B.-International Organisation of Book Towns, a network of villages in which second-hand and antiquarian bookshops are concentrated.

Tourism and main attractions

The castle of Urueña has a square keep and tubes in the corners. It is quite ruined and has served as a cemetery for many years. When it was built, it was a very important fortress, as it formed the border line between the kingdoms of Castilla and León, a division that had been carried out in the middle of the 12th century by King Alfonso VII of León and Castile.

The wall that surrounds the city is from the 12th and 13th centuries, made of masonry that is spanned from time to time by semi-cylindrical cubes.

The parish church of Santa María del Azogue is currently the only church in Urueña. It is located inside the walled enclosure, next to the “Puerta del Azogue”. Built between the 16th and 18th centuries, it has samples of styles: Gothic in its apse, Renaissance in its nave and an incomplete Baroque reform.

The church of Nuestra Señora de la Anunciada de Urueña is located outside the walled area of the town, in the valley. It was built in the 11th century according to the Lombard Romanesque style (“first Romanesque”).

Museums

Joaquín Díaz Ethnographic Center
Mercedes Rueda showroom
Quintana Bell Collection
Luis Delgado’s World Instrument Museum

Villa del Libro – Book city

In 2007, the Valladolid Provincial Council established the Villa del Libro in Urueña, the first in Spain, as a proposal for cultural tourism.

Inspired by the project in other existing book cities in Europe (for example Montolieu in France), its objective is to economically and culturally dynamize public spaces in relation to books and literature in general.

In Urueña, not only are books sold in its specialized bookstores, but it is also a meeting place for experts around the Miguel Delibes e-LEA center (space for Reading, Writing and its Applications). This center, with an area of 1,296 meters, houses a specialized library, exhibition and conference room, and is the nucleus, together with the Joaquín Díaz Foundation, of the intense cultural activity of Urueña.