Las Navas del Marqués is a municipality located in the

province of Ávila Ávila () is a province of central-western Spain, in the southern part of the autonomous community of Castile and León. It is bordered on the south by the provinces of Toledo and Cáceres, on the west by Salamanca, on the north by Valladolid, an ...

Castile and León Castile and León ( es, Castilla y León ; ast-leo, Castiella y Llión ; gl, Castela e León ) is an autonomous community in northwestern Spain. It was created in 1983, eight years after the end of the Francoist regime, by the merging of the ...

Spain , image_flag = Bandera de España.svg , image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg , national_motto = ''Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond") , national_anthem = (English: "Royal March") , i ...

. It is 82 km to the northwest of Madrid. There are some different options to travel there from Madrid or Avila: you can go by car or by train. Although the train station is roughly 2 km away from the town, there are many buses that you can take every time you arrive here by train. There are trains every day connecting Las Navas to Madrid or Las Navas to Ávila. According to the 2007

census A census is the procedure of systematically acquiring, recording and calculating information about the members of a given population. This term is used mostly in connection with national population and housing censuses; other common censuses incl ...

(

INE INE, Ine or ine may refer to: Institutions * Institut für Nukleare Entsorgung, a German nuclear research center * Instituto Nacional de Estadística (disambiguation) * Instituto Nacional de Estatística (disambiguation) * Instituto Nacional Elec ...

), the municipality has a population of 5,098 inhabitants. According to statistics from 1 January 2016, Las Navas del Marqués had a population of 5,272 inhabitants. In summer, the population is five times bigger because the municipality receives many people from Madrid who spend their summer here because it is less hot than in the city.

Geography

Las Navas del Marqués is located in the center of the Iberian peninsula, between the Gredos and Guadarrama mountains. It is located at 1300 meters above sea level. It has a mountain-mediterranean climate, with very cold winters and mild or warm summers.

Flora

Las Navas del Marqués is surrounded by huge pine forests. Many people come from Madrid every weekend to enjoy walking through them and to benefit from the fresh air. The municipality has a fresh oak grove around called "La Fuente del Sauco" and in the summer people go there to have lunch and dinner.

Fauna

The surroundings of Las Navas del Marqués is home to many different species of wildlife, the most important one being the

black stork The black stork (''Ciconia nigra'') is a large bird in the stork family Ciconiidae. It was first described by Carl Linnaeus in the 10th edition of his ''Systema Naturae''. Measuring on average from beak tip to end of tail with a wingspan, t ...

Monuments

Some important monuments that are interesting to visit are th
palace-castle of Magalia
which was built in the 16th century and holds important events every year; San Juan Bautista Church, and San Pablo Convent which was left until 2007, now it shows temporal art exhibitions. Also located is the Eiffel lookout, attributed to the artist Gustave Eiffel.

Festivals

The most important events in Las Navas are their summer festivals. They start on the second Sunday of July and they are celebrated in honor of the Cristo de Gracia. The festival week is opened with a firework display and during the week there are races, as well as sports and food competitions, bullfights and open-air dancing. It is worth noting the Valladal Pilgrimage on 15 August, in which people wear costumes and go to the countryside in floats and horses. There they have lunch and play games together (like

greasy pole Greasy pole, grease pole, or greased pole refers to a tall pole that has been made slippery with grease or other lubricants and thus difficult to grip. More specifically, it is the name of several events that involve staying on, climbing up, w ...

and

sack race The sack race or potato sack race is a competitive game in which participants place both of their legs inside a sack or pillow case that reaches their waist or neck and hop forward from a starting point toward a finish line. The first person to ...

s) and then they decide which is the best float and the best horse.

References

Municipalities in the Province of Ávila {{Ávila-geo-stub