Pastors, domains, railways, rivers and bridges could be part of the references of Aldea del Fresno on his journey as a municipality, always remembered for being mentioned in the novel by Benito Pérez Galdós Nazarín. An evolution that has shaped him as a town with its own voice in the Sierra and the West Tourist Consortium which comprises 18 municipalities in the county.

Overview

Area: 51.8 km ^2.

Population: 2424 inhabitants

Gentile: Villagers

A 49 km from the capital

A little history

There seems no doubt about the birth of Aldea del Fresno following the arrival of transhumant shepherds from Segovia, who along with the farmers settled in the area before the twelfth century. Of Arabic origin, the town was destroyed and reconquered by the Christians and then join the Sexmo of Casarrubios, like many of the municipalities in the Western Sierra. In the sixteenth century many farms populated by bears and wild boar hunt and was acquired by the monastery of El Escorial. Already in the seventeenth century doña Catalina Mendoza acquire land in the village manor with a Royal Charter of Philip IV, later passing into the hands of the Marquise de Fresneda. Detailed mention of the Village in Fresno documents Archbishop of Toledo makes the town appear in the historical annals in the late eighteenth century, before that in 1833 the town becomes the province of Madrid. The railway line was opened in 1891 and was abandoned in the 70s of the twentieth century gave a major boost to the local economy. Since then, this stretch of rail is trying to recover as Via Verde.