Colmenar Viejo
Colmenar Viejo is a town and municipality of about 48,614 inhabitants, located in the Community of Madrid, Spain, 30 kilometers north of Madrid on the M-607 motorway. It belongs to the comarca of Cuenca Alta del Manzanares. Main sights. In the town, there are many archeological sites, most of them come from hispanic- visigothic times, with household areas and burials. The most important tourist attractions places in Colmenar Viejo are: Physical environment. Colmenar Viejo's municipality has a size of 182.6 square kilometres (70.5 square miles), the third largest in the province of Madrid, after Madrid and Aranjuez . Traditional granite mining has been changing Colmenar Viejo's landscape. As a result of livestock farming, mainly cow and horse cattle, grassland has been taking a main role. A large part of land under Colmenar Viejo's jurisdiction is inside of the Parque regional de la Cuenca Alta del Manzanares (Manzanares Upper Basin Regional Park), causing that land to be under a high protection environmental level. The Navalvillar Grassland is protected by the municipality and, albeit it does not belong to the Park, it is quite rich in flora and fauna. Cinematography. Estudios Tablada in Madrid used the Dehesa de  Navalvillar as a filming location for films such as "El Cid", "Spartacus", "Alexander the Great", "For A Few Dollars More", "La última aventura", "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly" and "Conan the Barbarian". The television series Locked Up ("Vis a vis") also commissioned a studio in Colmenar Viejo for most of its filming. Transport. Train. Colmenar Viejo has a train station in the outskirts of the town, which is the terminal of line C-4 of Cercanías Madrid. From the station, you can go to Tres Cantos in about 8 minutes, to Cantoblanco University in about 15 and to Madrid  (Chamartin) in about 23. Since 2011, they used to pass trains to Burgos in Colmenar, but due to a detachment in the Somosierra tunnel, the trains to Burgos no longer pass through here. External links.