For the city in Mexico, see Valladolid, Yucatán. For the municipality in the Philippines, see Valladolid, Negros Occidental.

Valladolid is an industrial city and its municipality in central Spain, upon the Rio Pisuerga and within the Ribera del Duero region. It is the capital of the province of Valladolid and of the autonomous community of Castile-Leon, therefore is part of the historical region of Castile. As of the 2004 census, the population of the city of Valladolid proper was 321,713, and the population of the entire urban area was estimated to be near 400,000. It is also popularly called Pucela, a nickname whose origin is not clear, but probably refers to a few knights who accompanied "Juana de Arco".

Etmology

The most probable origin of the term is Latin: VALLIS, "Valley"; and Celtic: TOLITUM, "place of confluence of waters" ^*, The name is also linked with the Arabic name for the city بلد الوليد meaning The City of Walid.

History

Valladolid was captured from the Moors in the 10th century, being a small village improved by count Pedro Ansúrez in the 11th century; by the 15th century it was the residence of the kings of Castile and remained the capital of the Kingdom of Spain until 1561, when Philip II moved the capital to Madrid. It bought back capitality from the king once again between 1600 and 1606.

The city nonetheless boasts few architectural manifestations of its former glory. Some monuments include the unfinished cathedral, the church of Santa Maria la Antigua, the Plaza Mayor (the template for that of Madrid and of future main squares in the Spanish-speaking world), the National Sculpture Museum, next to the church of Saint Paul, which includes Spain's greatest collections of polychrome wood sculptures, and the Faculty of Law of the University of Valladolid, whose façade is one of the few surviving works by Narciso Tomei, the same artist who did the transparente in Toledo Cathedral. The Science Museum is next to Pisuerga river. The only surviving house of Miguel de Cervantes is also located in Valladolid. Although unfinished, Cathedral of Valladolid was designed by Juan de Herrera, architect of El Escorial.

Valladolid is an economic motor of the autonomous community, having an important automobile industry (FASA-Renault, Michelin). There is an airport at nearby Villanubla, with connections to London-Stansted, Paris, Brussels-Charleroi, Lisbon, Barcelona and Vigo.

Vallisoletanos (or pucelanos) are reputed to speak the purest Spanish of all of Spain. However this reputation is largely undeserved as a majority of Vallisoletanos break the standards of Spanish on a continuous basis. For example, the speech of Valladolid is characterized by leísmo not tolerated by the Royal Spanish Academy (the use of pronoun le instead of lo for inanimate direct object; e.g., Cómetele todo, "Eat it all"), laísmo (the use of pronoun la instead of le for feminine indirect object; e.g., La dije que viniera, "I told her to come"), and the use of certain intransitive verbs as transitive (like using quedar, "to stay", to mean dejar, "to leave"; e.g., Tu chaqueta, ¿la quedas aquí?, "Are you leaving your jacket here?"). Also, yeísmo (the merging of the palatal lateral phoneme spelled ll into the palatal fricative phoneme spelled y) is nowadays widespread in Valladolid city especially among the younger generations. While some of these developments can be encountered elsewhere throughout Spain, other are endemic to the Valladolid area (e. g. leísmo, use of intransitive verbs as transitive).

Valladolid is also the city in which Christopher Columbus died in 1506.

Demography

See also

• Province of Valladolid
• List of municipalities in Valladolid

External links

• Tourism in Valladolid province
• City Hall of Valladolid
• University of Valladolid
• Valladolid Airport
• Municipal Foundation of Culture
• El Norte de Castilla (newspaper)
• El Día de Valladolid (newspaper)
• Real Valladolid Football Club
• Public Transport (buses)
• Holy Week Association of Valladolid
• Valladolid´s photoblog
• Holy Week in Valladolid
• I Love Valladolid--Blog of Valladolid
• valladolidwebmusical
• DDOOSS

Municipalities in Valladolid

بلد الوليد | Valladolid | Вальлядалід | Valladolid | Valladolid | Valladolid | Valladolid | Valadolido | Valladolid | Valladolid | Valladolid | Valladolid | ויאדוליד | Vayadolid | Valladolid (Kastilië-Leon) | バリャドリッド | Valladolid | Valladolid | Вальядолид | Valladolid | Valladolid | Valladolid | Valladolid