Colmenar Viejo

Colmenar Viejo (Spanish: [kolmeˈnaɾ ˈβjexo] ^ⓘ) 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.

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:

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.

Colmenar Viejo has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate (Köppen Csa) with cold winters.

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.