Valladolid
The wine harvest
1886. Oil on canvas, 91x203 cm
Museo Nacional del Prado
Peñafiel
The sun is setting on Peñafiel. Its castle is now home to the Provincial Wine Museum, a symbol of the Ribera del Duero appellation for wine tourism. From up on high it looms over the valleys of the Douro, Duratón and Botijas rivers.
Thanks to the photograph we can travel in time. On this occasion through the objective of the German photographer Otto Wunderlich who, in his tireless work across Spain, made a stop in Peñafiel. We don’t know the year for certain, but sometime between 1930 and 1936. A group of women is washing clothes on the banks of the Duratón as it goes through Peñafiel. The houses in this medieval town complete the film set. In the foreground there are piles of wine skins. Not far from there, the underground cellars remain silent.
Peñafiel Castle
1930-1936
Wunderlich archive, IPCE, Culture & Sport Ministry
Peñafiel
1930-1936
Wunderlich archive, IPCE, Culture & Sport Ministry
Peñafiel, Valbuena, Sardón, Tudela, Simancas and Tordesilllas. All these towns are on the same river, the Douro. Between vineyards, pine forests and the horizon that the plains offer us, an eagle soars in the sky above.
Here the banks are full of aspens, willows and elms, while the waters of the Douro flow slowly, making their way along the vestiges of their own history. These are the architectures of the Douro, in the words of José Luis Gutiérrez Robledo, «witnesses of the river, of its history and of its peoples». Like the monastery of Santa María de Valbuena.
Joaquín Araujo y José Luis Gutiérrez Robledo
Las arquitecturas del Duero. DUERO. HISTORIA VIVA.
Lunwerg Editores
Santa María de Valbuena
Over a dozen Cistercian monasteries> were established along the river Douro in Castile & León. Some have disappeared, such as Santa María de Aza and San Pedro de Gumiel de Izán. Others are full of life, such as Santa María de Valbuena, a place for contemplation and currently the headquarters of the Edades del Hombre [Ages of Man] Foundation.
«If the sky of Castile is lofty, it is because the country people will have lifted it up from so much gazing at it».
Miguel Delibes
"Dependencia del cielo"
in Castilla, lo castellano y los castellanos [Castile, Castilian qualities and the Castilians], 1979
Valbuena de Duero. Santa María Monastery and environs
20th May 2009.
Herrero archive, IPCE, Culture and Sport Ministry.
Santa María de Valbuena legend
A legend has grown up around about the Monastery of St. Mary of Valbuena, remembered by José Luis Velasco, which goes as follows. On the 20th August 1545, the feast of St. Bernard, Ana de Montemayor y Aceves fainted as she was crossing the river by boat and fell in. The boatman, Quico, full name Francisco de San Bernardo, jumped in to save her, but a man appeared, dressed as a pilgrim, who never grew old, saved both of them. He was Brother Diego.
Valbuena de Duero. Santa María Monastery and environs
20th May 2009.
Herrero archive, IPCE, Culture and Sport Ministry.
Not far from there, in Curiel de Duero, time seems to have stood still
View of the Curiel de Duero farmhouse, with the castle ruins in the background
1924
Burgos regional government archive
Universal chart containing everything discovered in the world up to that point: it was divided into two parts in accordance with the negotiation between the Catholic Monarchs of Spain and King Juan of Portugal in Tordesillas in 1494
1494
Royal Academy of History, Digital Library
Tordesillas
We have reached the end of our tour of the lands of Valladolid. Far off we can just make out the medieval bridge of Tordesillas, for centuries a mandatory stop along the Douro. The points of its ten arches let the water flow far from the weight of history. Here was the signing of that treaty (1494) that drew a dividing line from pole to pole carving up the world: the eastern hemisphere for the Crown of Portugal and the western for the Crown of Castile.
Santa Clara Monastery
It is likely that, in the silence of the night, Leonor de Guzmán, Alfonso XI’s lover, heard the waters of the Douro from her quarters in the palace, known then as Pelea de Benemerín to commemorate the Battle of Salado. Later on, in 1365, it became the Royal Monastery of Santa Clara.
Santa Clara Monastery, Tordesillas. Arab baths column room
1910-1920
Madrid digital library
Final landscape
By this point the Douro has increased its flow, thanks to the incorporation of the Pisuerga. The willows come close to the banks and the birds fly over the treetops of poplars, aspens and ash trees. There is not long to go before Toro, in the Douro floodplain. A city where, in the words of the writer Suso de Toro, «the wine is stored, red and as thick as blood».
