Itero de la Vega (Palencia) (0)

Did you know that... Itero de la Vega

It is located on the right bank of the river Pisuerga in the heart of Tierra de Campos, on the border with the province of Burgos, in a plain of gentle undulations. Itero de la Vega enters the annals of history with its founder Fernán Mentález de Melgar, a contemporary of Fernán González, Count of Castilla, who repopulated several towns in this area such as Melgar de Yuso, Boadilla del Camino ... Although Itero de la Vega was a free town, he was always linked to nobles who rendered their services to the kings. In the tenth century the town was mentioned as Hitero. The Pisuerga river was in this century the borderline between Castile and Leon, so the area was an important enclave where several battles were fought as the one that took place in the fields of Tamara with the victory of Fernando I and his subsequent proclamation as king of Castile and Leon in 1937.

A little more history

When he died years later his kingdom disintegrated, leaving the monasteries for his daughters, Sancha and Elvira, the kingdom of Castile for Sancho II and the kingdom of León was of Alfonso VI, which caused, because the brothers did not agree with the distribution, the famous battle that in 1068, took place in Lantada, place near Itero de la Vega, where the Cid Don Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar was the main hero. In Itero, next to the bridge known today as Puente Fitero, ordered to be built by Alfonso VI in the 12th century, there was a hospital dedicated to San Juan which was founded by Count Nuño Pérez de Lara and which in the 13th century became part of the order of San Juan. The town of Itero de la Vega supported Enrique IV in his fight for the throne against the nobility, and the latter thanked him with favours and privileges, a symbol of this is the Rollo de Justicia which rises in the middle of the square and dates from 1529. Itero de la Vega has been a place of passage of diverse civilizations and of pilgrimage during more than ten centuries, today it is a small population in the route jacobea in which its people combine the works of the field with the hospitality to pilgrims and travellers.

What to see in Itero de la Vega?

In the limit of the province of Burgos, the Paso Itero, Puente Fitero or also called Ponteroso, crossing the river Pisuerga and joining Itero del Castillo and Itero de la Vega, is one of the longest bridges of the Way of Saint James. Built by Alfonso VI, it has seven of the eleven ashlar arches that it originally had; near it is the Romanesque-Gothic hermitage of San Nicolás. Within the municipality of Itero de la Vega there were four hermitages, that of Santa María, San Andrés, San Esteban and that of Santiago. The hermitage that is conserved today is located near the cemetery and dedicated to Our Lady of Pity. It dates back to the beginning of the Gothic period in the 13th century, it has Romanesque remains and inside it houses an old image of Santiago Peregrino.

To discover

In the square, the roll of justice, from the 16th century, sober and haughty, denotes the historical vigour of the place. But the most important monument in the village is the church of San Pedro, whose entrance is one of the few remaining remains of the original 13th century temple. The current church is basically Renaissance, from the 16th century, inside there are several baroque altars and beautiful images and sculptures from different periods, its squat tower is from the 16th or early 17th century. The temple has a porch that protects an elegant thirteenth-century Gothic doorway in which you can see remains of paint. Outside the village, on the way to Boadilla, we come across what looks like a neighbourhood of typical cellar constructions, in which a small hut protects the entrance to the excavated caves that hold the wine at a good depth. A little over a kilometre in the direction of Lantadilla there is a bridge that in Itero is known as the bridge of the peaks because of the colourful peak stones that flank its two sides.

Festivities

On 8 September the patron saint fiestas of the Virgen de la Piedad are celebrated with, among other acts, a mass in the hermitage in offering to the patron saint and then a procession of the image of the Virgin preceded by the music band. Fifteen days before Ash Wednesday the Fiestas de Las Ánimas are celebrated in Itero, the Cofradía de las Ánimas offers a mass in the parish of San Pedro..

Traditions

A recent tradition celebrated in Itero de la Vega is the Tachurock Solidarity Festival. On the third weekend in August, in order to raise funds to support development projects in Angola, the villagers organize it by offering a large paellada, solidarity market and lots of music and anyone who wants to come can make free camping.

Curiosities

According to the poem by Fernan Gonzalez Itero was one of the vertices of the triangle that formed the first Castilian county: Peña Amaya north of the province of Burgos, Villafranca Montes de Oca east of the capital and Itero de la Vega to the west.