Espinosa de los Monteros, Spain: Travel Guide & Things to Do

Espinosa de los Monteros sits in the far north of Burgos province, in the green, rain-fed corner of Castile and Leon known as Las Merindades. It is a mountain town rather than a meseta town: the Trueba river runs through it, the limestone wall of the Montes de la Pena rises behind it, and the passes of Lunada and La Sia climb from its outskirts toward Cantabria and the sea. Burgos city lies roughly 100 kilometres to the south, Bilbao about 75 kilometres to the north-east, and that in-between position explains almost everything about the place – a Castilian town built where Castile finally runs out of plateau and turns into pasture, beech wood and cloud.

Its name comes from the Monteros de Espinosa, the royal bodyguard drawn from this one town whose members stood watch over the sleeping quarters of the Castilian and later Spanish monarchs. The tradition is usually dated to the early eleventh century and the court of the Counts of Castile, and it made Espinosa a town of privilege: families here held hidalgo status, and they spent the proceeds on stone. The result is a village of barely two thousand people carrying an improbable number of fortified tower houses, Renaissance palaces and coats of arms cut into lintels. Travellers riding El Expreso de la Robla between Leon and Bilbao pass through exactly this landscape, on the narrow-gauge line that was laid to carry coal north to the Basque foundries and now carries a very small number of guests instead.

What to see in Espinosa de los Monteros

• Torre de los Velasco – The blunt medieval keep at the heart of the old town, raised by the Velasco family who dominated northern Burgos for centuries. Its plain, square mass is the best single reminder that this was frontier country long before it was a spa-and-pasture retreat.
• Torre de Berrueza – A second fortified tower house, traditionally linked to the founding families of the Monteros. It stands close enough to the Velasco tower that you can read the two of them as rival statements in the same argument about status.
• Palacio de los Chiloeches – A Baroque palace with a heavily carved facade and an armorial shield that dwarfs the doorway. It is the showiest of Espinosa’s noble houses and the easiest to photograph from the street.
• Iglesia de Santa Cecilia – The parish church at the top of the village, with a substantial tower and a plain, well-proportioned interior. The walk up to it gives the clearest overall view of the rooftops against the mountain wall.
• Convento de Santa Clara – A working religious house on the edge of town, founded in the sixteenth century, and a quiet counterweight to all the military swagger elsewhere in Espinosa.
• Ojo Guarena – About half an hour west, one of the largest cave systems in Spain and a designated natural monument. The visitable set piece is the hermitage of San Bernabe, built directly into the rock mouth and painted with frescoes of the saint’s life.
• Las Machorras and the Pasiego valleys – South-east of town, a scatter of stone cabanas pasiegas across steep meadows, still used for summer grazing. The sanctuary of Las Nieves here is the focus of a well-known local romeria.
• Puerto de Lunada and Puerto de la Sia – Two mountain passes that lift you out of Burgos and drop you toward Cantabria in a few kilometres. Both are classic cycling climbs and both give enormous views back over the Trueba valley.

What to eat in Espinosa de los Monteros

This is Burgos food with a mountain accent. Morcilla de Burgos – blood sausage bound with rice and onion, fried until the edges crisp – turns up on almost every table, and the fresh, faintly saline queso de Burgos appears both as a starter and, drizzled with honey, as dessert. The great winter dish of Las Merindades is olla podrida, a long-simmered stew built on the red beans of the region with pork ribs, chorizo and morcilla; it is heavy, superb and best ordered when the weather is doing something dramatic outside. Roast lechazo, cured cecina, and trout from the Trueba round out the repertoire.

Because Espinosa borders the Pasiego country, the sweets lean north. Look for sobaos, dense butter sponge cakes baked in paper cases, and quesada, a soft curd-and-lemon bake somewhere between cheesecake and custard. Local honey is excellent, the milk is genuinely good, and there is a regional railway tradition worth knowing about: the olla ferroviaria, a stew cooked in a charcoal-fired pot that rail workers once carried on the line, still cooked competitively at village fiestas across the province. Drink Ribera del Duero if you want the famous bottle, or ask for a local cider or a clarete if you want what the next table is drinking.

Shopping and crafts

Espinosa is a place to shop with a cool bag rather than a suitcase. The morcilla, the cheeses, the honey and the sobaos all travel, and small charcuteries and bakeries in the centre will vacuum-pack for you. Beyond food, look for woodwork and simple woollen goods in the surrounding valleys, and for the ironwork that still appears on doors and balconies throughout the old quarter.

Best time to visit

Late spring to early autumn is the window. May and June bring the meadows into flower and keep the passes clear; September offers warm afternoons, thinner crowds and the start of the mushroom season. July and August are the liveliest, with village fiestas and romerias, and are also when luxury rail itineraries across northern Spain run most frequently. Winter here is genuinely a mountain winter – cold, wet and often snowbound on the passes – so it suits fireside travellers rather than sightseers.

Good to know

• Espinosa sits at around 750 metres and weather rolls in from the Cantabrian side without much warning. Bring a waterproof layer even in midsummer.
• The old town is compact and best seen on foot, but the streets are cobbled and sloped – flat, grippy shoes make a real difference.
• This is a small town on Spanish hours. Lunch runs roughly 2pm to 4pm and many shops close through the afternoon; plan sightseeing around it rather than against it.
• Card payment is normal in restaurants but carry some cash for village bakeries, markets and the smaller rural bars.
• English is not widely spoken outside hotels. A few words of Spanish are met with real warmth here.

Seeing this corner of Spain by luxury train

The Merindades are awkward to reach and lovely to move through slowly, which is why the narrow-gauge line makes such sense. El Expreso de la Robla runs between Leon and Bilbao across the northern edge of Castile, sleeping guests aboard and setting them down for guided visits in towns and landscapes of exactly this character. Palace Tours has been arranging luxury rail journeys across Spain for years and can build the train into a wider itinerary through Burgos, Cantabria and the Basque Country.

To plan a journey through northern Spain, call us in the US or Canada on 1-800-724-5120, message us on WhatsApp at +1-786-408-0610, or call internationally on +1-609-580-1372.