Castrillo del Val

Overview

Castrillo del Val is a village of about 860 people on the left bank of the Arlanzón, roughly 11 km southeast of Burgos, and almost everyone who comes here is coming for the Trappist monastery of San Pedro de Cardeña inside its boundaries. The municipality covers 22.54 km² at 939 m and is not one settlement but five: the village itself, Los Tomillares, Cerca de Santa Eugenia, the monastery, and the Cid Campeador military base.

Cardeña is a working Cistercian house of the Strict Observance. Monks from San Isidro de Dueñas refounded the community in 1942, after roughly a century in which the abbey stood suppressed and empty. That shapes the whole visit. There is no ticket desk and no wandering: the only way past the door is a guided tour led by a monk, about 45 minutes, starting inside the church at fixed times.

Away from the monastery the village is quiet farming country with a parish church, a second church at the San Juan neighbourhood, and the Monte de Castrillo behind it, about 500 hectares of oak and holm oak with walking and cycling tracks through it. Realistically this is half a day out of Burgos, not a base. Come for one tour slot, walk a loop, buy a bottle, drive back.

History

People were here long before the village was. Acheulean hand axes have been picked up on the surface across the municipality, and in 2004 a site called El Hundidero turned up material on Pleistocene river terraces. The valley south of the village, Valdecuevas, holds several caves, among them the Cueva del Carrascal and the Portal de Belén.

The monastery enters the written record first. Cardeña appears in chronicles from 899, and its founding story reaches back to a Visigothic presence around the 6th century. Its defining legend is dated 934: 200 monks killed under Abbot Stephen during an attack in the reign of Abd al-Rahman III, later entered in the Roman Martyrology on 6 August, though no documentary proof of the massacre survives. The village follows in 952, when a woman named Doña Eusacia handed her estate to the monks; twenty years later Count Garci Fernández gave them Santa Eugenia too.

Then comes El Cid. Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar died in Valencia in 1099 and his body was brought to Cardeña in 1102, after his widow abandoned the city. He and Doña Jimena stayed here for eight centuries. Their remains were moved to Burgos Cathedral in 1921, leaving the sepulchre behind.

The buildings you see are late medieval and later. The present Gothic church was dedicated in 1457 after about a decade of work, and in 1502 the abbey joined the reformed Benedictine congregation of San Benito de Valladolid. Napoleonic troops damaged it in 1808, and the Mendizábal disamortisation suppressed the abbey outright in 1836, opening what the monks themselves call a long century of abandonment. On the village side, the Cortes de Cádiz ended seigneurial jurisdiction in 1810, which is when local government here stopped meaning the abbot.

The 20th century was rougher still. Between 1936 and 1939 the empty monastery served as a Francoist concentration camp holding more than 4,000 Republican prisoners of war, many of them International Brigade volunteers and Basque soldiers, and it closed in November 1939. Monastic life resumed in 1942. On 1 February 1967 a fire destroyed three quarters of the complex, which is why so much of what you walk through is restored fabric rather than original.

Visiting

Getting here is straightforward by car and awkward without one. From the centre of Burgos take the Bulevar del Ferrocarril towards Fuentes Blancas onto the BU-800; the signposted left turn is 2 km past Cardeñajimeno, a little over 10 km and about 15 minutes in total.

Tours leave on weekdays at 10:15, 11:15, 12:15, 16:15 and 17:15, and on Sundays and solemnities at 12:15, 16:20 and 17:15. No reservation is needed for a couple or a family, but groups over ten should email turismo@cardena.org in advance, and no tour runs for fewer than two people. The monastery is closed to visits on the first Wednesday of each month, on New Year’s Day, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday, on Christmas Eve afternoon and Christmas Day, and on the last Saturday of May.

The route starts in the church, built between 1447 and 1457 in Hontoria limestone, with three statues in the tympanum and an interior about 44 m by 28 m carrying six vaults down the central nave. The square Torre Cidiana beside it is older than everything around it, late 10th or more likely early 11th century, with pre-Romanesque capitals carved with spirals, pine cones and birds. In the left arm of the transept is the Panteón del Cid, a Baroque chapel of 1735 with a retablo added in 1738 and 26 coats of arms of illustrious figures around it.

Two other parts of the monastery work on separate rules. The Romanesque cellar is not on the tour route: it opens for a few days a year during the Semana Cidiana in the first week of October. The hospedería takes guests in 26 heated en-suite rooms on full board, with a two-night minimum and a seven-night maximum, arrivals between 10:00 and 13:00 or 16:00 and 18:00, and booking at least a week ahead. The monks state plainly that it is a house of prayer and silence, not a hotel or a touring base, and the gates are locked from 20:00 to 8:30.

You can also simply sit in on the liturgy, which is sung in the Gothic church. Mass is at 11:00 on Sundays and solemnities all year; in summer, between Corpus Christi and 12 October, there is Mass with Lauds at 7:30 from Monday to Saturday, Vespers at 19:00 on Sunday, and Compline daily at 21:15.

The village itself takes twenty minutes. The parish church of Santa Eugenia has a doorway dated 1607 and a run of modern work behind it: the interior reformed in 1972, a clock in 1989, heating in 1999, the retablos restored in 2005 and an automatic bell mechanism fitted in 2009. For a walk, the marked circular trail PRC-BU 115, the Sendero del Destierro del Cid, starts in the village and runs 10 km in two to three hours at medium difficulty.

Tips

• Arrive ten minutes before a slot. Tours begin inside the church, not at a desk, and they need at least two people to run.

• Do not plan a first Wednesday of the month. There are no tours that day, and the shop is closed every Wednesday of the year.

• Sunday and feast-day visiting is thinner: 12:15, 16:20 and 17:15 only, with no morning slots. The same applies on about eleven local solemnities including 6 January, 25 July and 15 August.

• Shop hours run 11:00 to 13:00 and 17:00 to 18:30 on weekdays except Wednesday, and 12:15 to 13:15 and 17:00 to 18:30 on Sundays. Build them in separately; they do not overlap neatly with tours.

• Bring coins. The only published price is the town hall’s 2 euros for the museum, 1 euro for groups.

• Phoning is only useful in porter’s hours: 10:00 to 13:00 and 16:00 to 18:00 Monday to Saturday, 12:00 to 13:30 and 16:30 to 18:00 on Sundays and solemnities, on 947 290033.

• The first week of October is the one window for the Romanesque cellar, during the Semana Cidiana.

• The last Saturday of May is a write-off for tours: the monastery closes, and the village holds the Romería de la Hermandad de Nuestra Señora de los Mártires.

• The village fiesta is San Juan Bautista on 24 June, with a bonfire at the Alto Castillejo. Expect the village busy and the monastery running as normal.

• If you want to stay, the hospedería needs a week’s notice and a two-night commitment, and it is full board with the community rather than a room you come and go from.