Sahagún

Sahagún grew beside a Benedictine monastery on the Cea and the pilgrimage road to Santiago de Compostela. Alfonso VI granted privileges to encourage settlement in 1085. The abbey accumulated extensive property and its authority over the town prompted conflicts with townspeople seeking greater autonomy.

The monastery remained prominent in later centuries, although fires in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries led to rebuilding. In 1808 British cavalry defeated French troops near Sahagún during the Peninsular War; the fighting damaged the town and monastery. The monks were expelled in 1820 and the monastery closed definitively in 1835 during the confiscation of ecclesiastical property.