Leon – A Jewel in Spain set amongst the Cantabrian Mountains…

I spend a lot of time skimming the internet, one of my favourite net hobbies happens to be trawling through travel and tourism sites looking at pictures of people having fun in exotic locations – this of course angers me greatly, but I do like to daydream of killing them in an exotic places…

So in pursuit of my hobby and in complete avoidance of work I spent the majority of yesterday skimming through pictures of Spain. One destination that kept popping up was the city of Leon, situated in the autonomous community of Castille and Leon. Located just south of the Cantabrian Mountains in North West Spain, Leon has a long and illustrious history, central to the creation of what we now consider to be modern day Spain.

The Iberian Peninsula has long been inhabited, at first by early man during the Mesolithic and the Neolithic periods and then later by various Mediterranean cultures and migratory tribes. Carthage and Rome were the first two major civilizations to put their stamp on Hispania, but many more cultures followed including the Gauls, the Visigoths, the Byzantines and the Moors. The lands of España eventually consolidated into one nation during the Reconquista, a period of conflict that lasted for 600 years and saw the various Christian kingdoms of Spain grow and merge, uniting against the Moorish Al-Andalus to the south.

As you can imagine the history of Spain is an incredibly long and convoluted narrative that extends over thousands of years. Throughout the centuries, just like Spain, the city of Leon has also undergone various transformations. Since its inception the city has grown, been sacked, burnt down and has been rebuilt, but much of the ancient architecture and buildings from the Reconquista period remain including the Santa María de León Cathedral and the Basilica of San Isidoro.

The more I look at Leon and the surrounding Cantabrian Mountains the more I want to visit. I’m thinking about killing two birds with one stone, if I fly into Santander and hire a car in Spain I can spend a few days walking and driving through the mountains, after that I can head to Leon and use up my remaining days visiting various sites and eating traditional Spanish cuisine.

Cantabrian Mountains

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