This article deals with the Spanish city. For the one in Yucatán, Mexico, see: Valladolid, Yucatán

Valladolid is an industrial city in central Spain, upon the Rio Pisuerga. It is the capital of the province of Valladolid and of the autonomous community of Castile-Leon. As of the 2003 census, the population of the city of Valladolid proper was 321,143, and the population of the entire urban area was estimated to be near 400,000.

Plaza Mayor and city hall, Valladolid

The unfinished cathedral and the Plaza de Cervantes, near the University of Valladolid

The church of Santa María la Antigua, Valladolid

Valladolid was captured from the Moors in the 10th century; by the 15th century it was the residence of the kings of Castile and remained the capital of the Kingdom of Spain until 1531, when Philip II moved the capital to Madrid. (It became the capital once again from 1600 to 1606.)

The city (called "Pucela" by its inhabitants) nonetheless boasts few architectural manifestations of its former glory. Some monuments include the unfinished cathedral, the church of Santa Maria la Antigua, the Plaza Mayor (the template for that of Madrid and of future plazas in the Spanish-speaking world), the National Sculpture Museum which includes Spain's greatest collections of polychrome wood sculptures, and the Faculty of Law of the University of Valladolid, whose facade is one of the few surviving works by Narciso Tomei , the same artist who did the transparente in Toledo Cathedral. The Museum of the Cience is next to river Pisuerga. The only surviving house of Miguel de Cervantes is located in Valladolid. Although unfinished, Valladolid's Cathedral was designed by Juan de Herrera , architect of El Escorial.

Valladolid is an economic motor of the autonomous community, having an especially important automobile industry. There is an airport at nearby Villanubla.

Vallisoletanos (or pucelanos) are reputed to speak the purest Castilian of all of Spain, a reputation similar to that of Tours or Aberdeen, Scotland. However, this widespread belief is merely a myth, given that the speech of Valladolid is actually characterized by such non-standard features as leísmo no admitido (the use of pronoun le instead of lo for inanimate direct object; e.g., Cómetele todo, "Eat it all"), laísmo (the use of pronoun la instead of le for feminine indirect object; e.g., La dije que viniera, "I told her to come"), and the use of certain intransitive verbs as transitive (like using quedar, "to stay", to mean dejar, "to leave"; e.g., Tu chaqueta, ¿la quedas aquí?, "Are you leaving your jacket here?"). Also, yeísmo (the merging of the palatal lateral phoneme spelled ll into the palatal fricative phoneme spelled y) is nowadays widespread in Valladolid city especially among the younger generations.