By Ines Keane
There is an old saying that the town is neither holy, nor flat, nor by the sea. It is a neat joke, and, like most neat jokes, only partly true.
The town in brief
Santillana del Mar is in Cantabria, on Spain’s northern coast. Wikipedia gives its elevation as 82 metres and the area of the municipality as 28.46 square kilometres. It gives a population of 4,172 for 2018. The Spanish-language Wikipedia article is newer and says 4,211 for the municipality in 2024, of whom 1,021 live in the main village itself. Both are census figures, so the gap is simply the years between them.
The three lies, one by one
Wikipedia gives the saying as “The Town of Three Lies”: it is not a saint, not flat, and not on the sea. The Spanish Wikipedia article explains each part. The name comes from Santa Juliana, and in 1228 the place appears as Villa de Sancta Illana. Before that it was Planes, perhaps from the Latin word for a clearing among mountains, which is where “flat” comes from. As for the sea, the village is inland, but the municipality itself reaches the Cantabrian coast on its northern side. Our reading: the rhyme is a pun on the name, and the geography is looser than the joke.
Two beginnings
Spain’s national tourism site (promotional) says the town grew around a church from the 8th century. The Spanish Wikipedia article points instead to a Latin document of 980 that mentions the church of Santa Juliana at a place called Planes, and to a charter, a fuero, granted by Alfonso VIII in 1209. Our reading: one looks like a story of origin and the other like a paper trail, so they need not clash, but they are two different answers to “when did it begin?”
The collegiate church
The Colegiata de Santa Juliana is Romanesque. The Spanish Wikipedia article says it was built mostly in the middle of the 12th century and rebuilt by the Polanco family in the early 16th. Its cloister dates from the late 12th century and has 42 Romanesque capitals. The same article says a royal order of 12 March 1889 declared it a monument, the first in Cantabria to be so recognised. The tourism site calls it a 12th-century church with a cloister of carved capitals and a sculpted façade.
Towers, a square and a house with two moustaches
The Torre del Merino is a 14th-century tower with battlements. The Spanish Wikipedia article says it was the home of the merino, the king’s official, and that today it holds temporary exhibitions. It stands on the Plaza de Ramón Pelayo, once the market square. The article connects the market with the fuero of 1209, and puts the Torre de don Borja and the town hall on the same square. The tourism site gives the Merino as 14th century and Don Borja as 15th, and calls them the town’s oldest civil buildings.
The Casa de los Hombrones, on the calle del Cantón, was built between the 15th and 17th centuries. It takes its name from two moustached men holding up the Baroque shield on its front. The tourism site adds that most of the grand houses date from the 14th to the 18th centuries.
One street, several names
The tourism site names the main street as Calle de Santo Domingo. The Spanish Wikipedia article says the main axis of the old centre goes by Calle del Río, Carrera and Cantón, depending on the stretch. We do not choose between them. Walkers will meet more than one.
A protected town
The English Wikipedia article says the town was declared a historic-artistic ensemble on 27 July 1943. The Spanish article adds that it had earlier been declared a historic-artistic monument as a whole in 1889, and it counts seven sites of cultural interest in the municipality.
A sculptor’s museum
The Museo Jesús Otero shows the work of a sculptor from Santillana who lived from 1908 to 1994. According to the Spanish Wikipedia article, it includes fifty sculptures he gave to the town council in 1993.
Altamira next door
The famous cave is at Altamira, and the national museum devoted to it carries a Santillana del Mar address, according to the Ministry of Culture’s museum site. The distance depends on who you read. The tourism site says about 2 kilometres. The Spanish Wikipedia article says the neighbouring hamlet of Herrán, half a kilometre from the town, holds the zoo, the cave and the museum. Both can be right if one measures from the church and the other from the edge of the town, but neither says so.
Food, briefly
The Spanish Wikipedia article names “tableta con leche”, a sponge made with eggs, flour, sugar and lemon zest, plus cheeses, quesadas and sobaos. It says the shops sell Santoña anchovies, Picón de Tresviso cheese, venison cecina and sobao pasiego. The tourism site adds cocido montañés, a stew of beans, meat and cabbage.
What kind of sources these are
English and Spanish Wikipedia; Spain’s national tourism site, which is promotional; and the Ministry of Culture’s page for the Altamira museum. No academic study was read.
What we left out
Opening hours, hotels, restaurants, the cost of anything, and the pilgrim-route material on the tourism page, which we did not need.
Quick answers
How big is Santillana del Mar? According to Wikipedia, the municipality covers 28.46 square kilometres and had 4,172 people in 2018.
Why is it called the town of three lies? According to Wikipedia, because it is said to be neither a saint, nor flat, nor by the sea.
How far is it from Altamira? Sources differ: the tourism site says about 2 kilometres, and the Spanish Wikipedia article says the hamlet with the cave is half a kilometre away.
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Roam first. Shop later.