Las Navas del Marqués is a municipality located in the

province of Ávila A province is an administrative division within a country or state. The term derives from the ancient Roman , which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire's territorial possessions outside Italy. The term ''provi ...

Castile and León Castile and León is an Autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community in northwestern Spain. Castile and León is the largest autonomous community in Spain by area, covering 94,222 km2. It is, however, sparsely populated, with a pop ...

, Spain. 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 (from Latin ''censere'', 'to assess') is the procedure of systematically acquiring, recording, and calculating population information about the members of a given Statistical population, population, usually displayed in the form of stati ...

( INE), 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. 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 and

sack race A sack race or potato sack race is a competitive game in which participants place both of their legs inside a sack (usually a potato sack) or pillow case that reaches their waist or neck and hop forward from a starting point toward a finish ...

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

References

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