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For other uses, see Valladolid (disambiguation).

Municipality in Castile and León, Spain

Valladolid (Spanish:[baʎaðoˈlið]) is a municipality in Spain and the primary seat of government and de facto capital of the autonomous community of Castile and León. It is also the capital of the province of Valladolid. It has a population of 300,618 people (2024 est.).

The city is located roughly in the centre of the northern half of the Iberian Peninsula's Meseta Central, at the confluence of the Pisuerga and Esgueva rivers 15 km (9.3 mi) before they join the Duero, surrounded by winegrowing areas. The area was settled in pre-Roman times by the Celtic Vaccaei people, and then by Romans themselves. The settlement was purportedly founded after 1072, growing in prominence within the context of the Crown of Castile, being endowed with fairs and different institutions such as a collegiate church, University (1241), Royal Court and Chancellery and a royal mint.

Valladolid was the location of Europe's first moral debate on the treatment of indigenous people and is the city in which Christopher Columbus died. It was briefly the capital of Habsburg Spain between 1601 and 1606. The city then declined until the arrival of the railway in the 19th century, and with its industrialisation into the 20th century.

The old town is made up of a variety of historic houses, palaces, churches, plazas, avenues and parks, and includes the National Museum of Sculpture as well as the houses of Zorrilla and Cervantes which are open as museums. Notably, the city's Plaza Mayor was the first of its kind in Spain, dating back to the thirteenth century. It was eventually used as a model for similar plazas such as Plaza Mayor in Madrid.

Among the events that are held each year in the city are the famous Holy Week, the World Jigsaw Puzzle Championships, and the Valladolid International Film Festival (Seminci). In 2019, Valladolid was recognised as

Isabel Allende now ranks as one of the world's most beloved authors. In 1988, she introduced the world to Eva Luna, in a novel of the same name that recounted the adventurous life of a poor young Latin American woman who finds friendship, love, and some measure of worldly success through her powers as a storyteller. Her most ambitious novel up to that time, "Eva Luna" was described by the "Washington Post" as "a cascade of stories [that] tumbles out before the reader, stories vivid, passionate and human." Returning to this tale by popular demand, Allende unveiled "The Stories of Eva Luna" in 1991. A treasure trove of brilliantly crafted tales, the book showed us once again why "Eva Luna" and her much-celebrated creator have won such a large and devoted readership.

We begin with Rolf Carle, the European refugee, journalist, and lover who figured so largely in "Eva Luna." Lying in bed with Eva Luna, he asks her to tell him a story. "What about?" she asks. "Tell me a story you have never told anyone before. Make it up for me." And so she does, giving Rolf Carle and the reader twenty-three vibrant, enchanting demonstrations of her artistry. Here are "compesinos" and rich people, guerrillas and fortune-tellers, great beauties and tyrants, the foreign rendered indelibly familiar.

Love, vengeance, nostalgia, compassion, irony -- Isabel Allende leaves no emotion untouched in these stories. Opulently imagined, stirringly told, they confirm her place as one of the world's leading writers.