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Home > Travel Spain > Spain Destinations > Valladolid
Valladolid
Spain, officially the Kingdom of Spain, is one of the oldest inhabited regions on the planet. It is a country that is located in Southern Europe, politically organized as a parliamentary monarchy. It is the largest of the three sovereign nations that make up the Iberian Peninsula. Administratively, Spain is divided into 50 provinces, grouped into 17 autonomous communities and 2 autonomous cities with high degree of autonomy. The name Spain comes from the Latin name Hispania whose capital and largest city is Madrid.
Valladolid is an industrial city and its municipality is in central Spain, upon the Rio Pisuerga and within the Ribera del Duero region. It is the capital of the province of Valladolid and of the autonomous community of Castile-Leon, therefore is part of the historical region of Castile. 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. It is also popularly called Pucela, a nickname whose origin is not clear, but probably refers to a few knights who accompanied Juana de Arco.
Valladolid was captured from the Moors in the 10th century, being a small village improved by count Pedro Ansurez in the 11th century, by the 15th century it was the residence of the kings of Castile and remained the capital of the Kingdom of Spain until 1561. The city 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 National Sculpture Museum, next to the church of Saint Paul, 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.
Valladolid is an econo mic motor of the autonomous community, having an important automobile industry IVECO, the Industrial Vehicle Corporation, FASA-Renault, and Michelin. There is an airport at nearby Villanubla, with connections to London-Stansted, Paris, Brussels-Charleroi, Lisbon, Barcelona and Vigo. The city is also host to one of the foremost and oldest international film festivals, founded in 1956. Valladolid is also the city in which Christopher Columbus died in 1506. Valladolid is one of Spain's most popular destinations, and is well known for the quantity of cultural related attractions and monuments that the city has embraced.
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