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Lerma (Municipality, Castilla y León, Spain)

Last modified: 2014-12-28 by ivan sache
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Flag of Lerma - Image by Ivan Sache, 10 February 2014


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Presentation of Lerma

The municipality of Lerma (2,886 inhabitants in 2012; 1,664 ha; tourism office website) is located on the south of the Burgos Province, 40 km from Burgos. The municipality is made of the town of Lerma (1,795 inh.) and of the villages of Castrillo de Solarana (43 inh.), Rabé de los Escuderos (14 inh.), Revilla Cabriada (51 inh.), Ruyales del Agua (31 inh.), Santill‡n del Agua (28 inh.) and Villoviado (21 inh.).

Lerma was established by Celtiberian tribes on a strategic site dominating river Arlanza. In the 10th century, the river was the border of the territory reconquerred by the Christian lords, who erected on its banks a series of forts. Lerma was a small settlement surrounded by walls protected by four gates, of which only the Jail's Arch has been preserved. Lerma was raided for the last time by the Moors at the end of the 10th century, when Almanzor defeated Count Sancho García on the neighbouring Cervera rocks.
Lerma was subsequently fiercely disputed between the Castro and Lara lineages, and then between Ferdinand III the Saint and Alfonso XI, involved in a dynastic quarrel. When the Lara lineage got extinct, Lerma was transferred to the Royal domain. In 1414, Ferdinand of Antequera granted the town and its dependencies to Diego Gómez de Sandoval y Rojas, as a reward for his support in the Battle of Antequera and in his struggle against the Count of Urgel.

The Gilded Age of Lerma started in 1599, when Francisco Gómez de Sandoval y Rojas (1553-1625), 4th Count of Lerma and 5th Marquis of Denia, was made Duke of Lerma. After the transfer of the Royal Court to Valladolid in 1601, the Duke of Lerma established his own Court in Lerma, in order to increase his own influence on King Philip III. The king's favourite for the next 20 years, the Duke of Lerma was granted amazing privileges from the king. The Duchy of Lerma ruled some 50 villages; the duke used the tax collected there to hire the king's architects Francisco de Mora, Juan Gómez de Mora and Friar Alberto de la Madre de Dios.
The town of Lerma, totally rebuilt, is considered as the best preserved historical town of Herrerian style in Spain. The duke built a palace, a plaza mayor among the biggest in Spain (6,862 sq. m), six monasteries, a collegiate church; he also founded cloth and dyeing factories, a printing house with Royal charter, and an hospital. Lerma became a pleasure court, where festivals were celebrated to honour the monarchs. Among the guests of the court were the writers Góngora and Lope de Vega. The comedy La burgalesa de Lerma by Lope de Vega (1613) is based on the festivals given in Lerma in autumn 1613.
Short before his disgrace in 1620, the Duke of Lerma was erected Cardinal; he spent his last years in Lerma and Valladolid, being forced to bring back the money he had illegally obtained, and eventually died in Valladolid on 18 May 1625. His heirs, involved in several court cases, abandoned the town. In the 18th-19th centuries, several travellers described the picturesque town of Lerma and its monumental, cold palace.

Villoviado is the birth town of Jerónimo Merino Cob (1769-1844), better known as Cura Merino (Priest Merino), who raised in 1808 a guerilla of 2,000 men against the French invaders. Cura Merino, winner of 58 battles in Roa, Burgos, Ezcaray, Hontoria del Pinar, Quintana de Puente, Quintanapalla and Vitoria, was appointed Captain and Lieutenant Colonel by the Spanish Government. Napoléon I said he would prefer to get the priest's head than five Spanish towns. At the end of the War of Independence, Merino retired as a priest in Villoviado; when the Carlist Wars broke out, Merino was appointed General in Chief of the Troops of Castile and Extremadura, leading 11,000 soldiers. Following the Carlist defeat, the priest exiled and died in the French town of Alençon (Normandy). The municipality of Lerma repatriated his remains in 1968.

Ivan Sache, 10 February 2014


Symbols of Lerma

The flag of Lerma (photo) is horizontally divided blue-white-red (1:2:1) with the municipal coat of arms in the middle.

The coat of arms of Lerma is prescribed by a Decree adopted on 9 February 2006 by the Municipal Council, signed on 26 March 2006 by the Mayor, and published on 3 April 2006 in the official gazette of Castilla y León, No. 66, p. 5,782 (text).
The coat of arms is described as follows:

Coat of arms: Per fess, 1a. Argent a saltire, or St. Andrew's cross, gules, 1b. Azure a moon crescent with a twirled snake orled by twelve five-pointed stars all argent. 2. Gules two towers or masoned sable port and windows azure linked by a wall or on a base vert. The shield surmounted by a Duke's coronet.

Ivan Sache, 10 February 2014