It’s tricky to research Santillana and even asking various people pertinent questions leads to a round of shrugs, ‘No se’ (I don’t know) or differing stories.

Many blogs call it the town of three lies, referring to the name.  In conversation with someone at the hotel, the name ‘del Mar’ arose because the de la Vega family (one of the most powerful in the town) had so much land that there was more than one Santillana in their holdings.  One became ‘Santillana de Campos’ and one became ‘Santillana del Mar’ – others became something else.

This same de la Vega family was powerful enough to provide the mother of the first Marquis of Santillana.  He, in turn, became enormously rich and influential (eventually dying in Mexico – see?  a link to the New World), thus encouraging various other rich and noble families into the town.

Of the twenty historically significant houses in Santillana del Mar, eighteen have protected status – which is, apparently, unusual.  These powerful, well connected families alongside the power of the church (specifically the monastery) allowed the town to escape a lot of development, providing a potential explanation for how and why the town remained so untouched.

Certainly, those I asked couldn’t provide an explanation but everyone agreed it was unusual.

We stayed at the Hotel Marques de Santillana, which is a house that originally belonged to the de la Vera family.  It’s a beautiful, large, sumptuou, early 16th century house, with a lot of dark wood and very plush, modern rooms.  The staff are friendly, chatty and extremely helpful and although it’s not the cheapest hotel on offer in the town, it’s well worth staying there.  There was one biggish negative:  the ‘free pour’ at the bar wasn’t particularly generous but I suppose that’s asking a lot for a three euros fifty cents glass of very nice red wine!

We ate at several diferent places.  The bar on the main square was highly indifferent.  The ‘El Canton’, quite close to the hotel with a large terrace, was also indifferent but better than the bar on the square:  we had ‘fried’ artichokes as a starter (they weren’t fresh but jarred, so a bit soggy) and fish.  All perfectly edible and at least it was inexpensive.  The last place we ate was the Restaurante Gran Duque.  It was small, with a wonderful front of house lady working by herself and all the cooking was very much done ‘right there’.  Roger’s stuffed artichokes were ‘fine’ (again not fresh but jarred, so somewhat soggy) while my grilled vegetables were great. 

We both had steak – mine needed to go back for a bit more cooking.  All nicely done but not the best steak I have had – it was a bit chewy (even after being cooked for a few more minutes). Roger went for the full experience and had steak with duck liver in a red wine sauce. (Neither of us ate again that day).  It was not what you could call refined cookery but was pleasant and most of the clientele was Spanish, which always gives us a nice glow.  There are Michelin guide places close by, but they would have required driving, which we wanted to avoid.

Santillana was a lovely place to visit:  beautiful, lots of history, in wonderful countryside and catering well to tourists (possibly a bit too well?).  However, we were extremely lucky with the weather: had it been wet, I’m not sure we would have had quite such a good time.  And three nights is more than an ample sufficiency – in fact, if you’re not going to walk or visit the Altamira caves and museum, two nights would suffice.

You do feel like you have gone back in time though…