History
Torrelavega was founded at the end of the thirteenth century by Garci Lasso de la Vega I (the elder), Adelantado Mayor of the Kingdom of Castile in the name of King Alfonso XI of Castile.
Its current name is due to the contraction of the original eponym of "Torre de la Vega". The Castle or Tower of the Vega's was built by Leonor de la Vega, daughter of Garci Lasso II de la Vega, the younger, and mother of the Íñigo López de Mendoza, marqués de Santillana in order to administer the tax and privilege due in the family's territory.
The name of the comarca, Valle del Besaya is derived from the Astur-Leonese Bisalia, which in turn derives from the Celtic, Bis-salia (the second Salia or Saja) from the two rivers that flow through the city.
Torrelavega was an important agricultural hub in the Kingdom of Castile since medieval times. Continuous population growth and industrial development enabled Torrelavega to attain city status in 1895 from the Queen Regent Maria Christina of Bourbon, Princess of the Two Sicilies.
The city is home to the main seat of the Spanish anarcho-syndicalist labor union the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo.
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—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“In nature, all is useful, all is beautiful. It is therefore beautiful, because it is alive, moving, reproductive; it is therefore useful, because it is symmetrical and fair. Beauty will not come at the call of a legislature, nor will it repeat in England or America its history in Greece. It will come, as always, unannounced, and spring up between the feet of brave and earnest men.”
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“History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning of things, which natural history might with reason assume to do; but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,—when did burdock and plantain sprout first?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)