Geography
Palencia lies in the north of the central Spanish plateau, the Meseta Central, in the middle of the Carrión river valley, near the river's confluence with the Pisuerga, which flows through the town and creating four small islands, Dos Aguas and Sotillo being the largest. Palencia is located approximately 100 miles north of Madrid, and some 40 miles north of the regional capital of Valladolid.
Two hills surround the city in its north-east area. On the closest stands the 30 metre high statue of Christ known as El Cristo del Otero, the fourth tallest statue of Christ in the world.
Palencia has a big forest of 1,438 hectares (3,550 acres) 6 km away. Inhabitants call it "Monte el Viejo" ("Old Mount"). This park is a popular amusement area for the locals.
The Canal de Castilla runs close to the city.
Palencia's municipality includes the village of Paredes de Monte, 14 km away.
Read more about this topic: Palencia
Famous quotes containing the word geography:
“The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges. Or, to change the figure, total science is like a field of force whose boundary conditions are experience.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
“At present cats have more purchasing power and influence than the poor of this planet. Accidents of geography and colonial history should no longer determine who gets the fish.”
—Derek Wall (b. 1965)
“Where the heart is, there the muses, there the gods sojourn, and not in any geography of fame. Massachusetts, Connecticut River, and Boston Bay, you think paltry places, and the ear loves names of foreign and classic topography. But here we are; and, if we tarry a little, we may come to learn that here is best. See to it, only, that thyself is here;—and art and nature, hope and fate, friends, angels, and the Supreme Being, shall not absent from the chamber where thou sittest.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)