Where the hell is Valdepenas?

You're all probably wondering where the hell Valdepenas is - I certainly was when I got told this would be my hometown for the next 8 months. Well, thanks to my good friend Wiki, I have some information for you.


Valdepenas is a municipality in the province of Ciudad Real, in the autonomous community of Castile-La Mancha, Spain. Its name means "Valley of Rocks", because it is located in a wide area meander of hill the Jabalón River surrounded, just bordering on the plain south of La Mancha and the subsoil is rich in limestone rock. It's located 2 hours south of Madrid.


Valdepeñas has several museums of history, art and wine. There are two Fairs, in August "the summer fair" at the first week and in September known as "Fiesta de la Vendimia" (Grape Harvest Fair).


The town is home contains large distilleries, tanneries, flour mills, cooperages, and other factories, but its chief trade is in red wines. The city is famous for its wines and is the centre of a grape-growing district. Valdepeñas wines are among the most popular in Spain and recently in EU countries.


Wine is so cheap here; in the supermarkets Valdepenas wine can be a cheap as 1 Euro, whereas the same wine in Tesco can be £10 or more


So heres some pictures of the town...

This is the main Plaza, and the church is called the Church of Asumption. Surrounding this church there are lots of bars that are open till early in the morning almost every night. My piso is literally 30 seconds walk from this church. It's a very social place; everyone gathers here for drinks and the kids of the town play football against the church wall as soon as school is over for the day (around 2:15pm for most schools) until the late hours.

This is a picture of the 'canal' street. No, not the 'anal treet', gay street of Manchester, but similar in a way - it has many bars and nightclubs along it. It may not look like a canal, but this is because the canal runs underneath the road. It's basically a big ditch, and fills up when it rains hard here.

This final picture is of my two best mates in the town Not really, it's Paul and a statue of a man sitting down reading a newspaper with a proper heavy briefcase. (BRIEFCASE WANKER). But yeah, Paul is the only other guy in Valde P doing this auxilliars thing and this is a photo taken on a day when neither of us had to go to school, so we decided to walk around the town and take photos of things.


More pictures of the town will be uploaded in another blog, of the fiestas that go on and of all the people that gather round the Plaza during the week and at the weekends.