Valladolid

The Spanish town was founded on 27 May 1543 by a nephew of the conquistador Francisco de Montejo, at a lagoon called Chouac-Ha in what is now the municipality of Tizimín, and named after Valladolid in Spain, then the Spanish capital. The settlers complained of mosquitoes and damp, and on 24 March 1545 the town was moved inland to Zací, the capital of the Maya chiefdom of the Cupul, whose name means "white hawk". Its buildings were taken apart and the stone used for the colonial town, and the cenote at its heart supplied water. The Maya revolted the next year, and again in 1705, when rebels killed town officials who had sheltered in the church; the building was considered profaned and replaced by the present Church of San Servacio.

By 1840 Valladolid had about 15,000 people and was the peninsula's third city after Mérida and Campeche, with a well-off criollo class living in Spanish-style mansions. In 1847 a Maya leader, Manuel Antonio Ay, was hanged in the plaza of Santa Ana, and the uprising that followed became the Caste War. The town was besieged, and on 14 March 1848 its defenders abandoned it; about half were killed in ambushes on the road to Mérida, and the rebels sacked the town before it was retaken.

In May 1910 a call to revolt against the Díaz dictatorship, the Plan de Dzelkoop, was signed in the municipality. Valladolid was declared a Pueblo Mágico on 30 August 2012, the second in Yucatán after Izamal, and the Tren Maya arrived in 2023.

Valladolid was long called the Sultana of the East, and its identity rests on its colonial barrios — Sisal, Santa Ana, La Candelaria and others — each grown up around its own church and park. In Maya the town is Sakiꞌ, the old Zací, and its coat of arms shows the white hawk standing for the Maya town alongside symbols of the Spanish one.

Religious fiestas punctuate the year, above all the feast of the Virgin of Candelaria, the town's patron, on 2 February. At regional fiestas people dance the jarana, the Yucatecan folk dance, often in competitions between couples. The town's main square, with its paired 'tú y yo' love seats, is the social centre in the evenings.

Crafts are sold on the square and at the Cenote Zací: wood carvings, traditional clothing, bags made from henequen fibre and handmade shoes and sandals. Valladolid has become far more tourist-oriented in recent years, and many sights now carry signs in Spanish and English.

About 56,000 people lived in the city at the 2020 census, and about 85,000 in the municipality — the third-largest community in Yucatán state after Mérida and Kanasín, and its largest outside the Mérida metropolitan area. The town is the service centre for the east of the state, with hospitals, schools and the main bus station for the surrounding villages, and many residents work in commerce, services, small industry and farming.

Tourism has grown quickly as visitors use the town as a base for Chichén Itzá, Ek' Balam and the cenotes, and the Tren Maya station north of town has added to the flow. Restaurants, guesthouses and shops now fill the centre and the Calzada de los Frailes.

The rhythm is that of a small Yucatecan town: early starts, a slow middle of the day in the heat, and evenings on the square. There are no city buses; people walk, cycle or take colectivos to the villages around.

Valladolid has dishes of its own. Lomitos de Valladolid is pork cooked in a fresh tomato sauce, and the town's longaniza is a pork sausage seasoned in the local way. Alongside them come the classics of the peninsula: cochinita pibil, pork marinated in achiote and spices, wrapped in banana leaf and cooked in a pit; lechón al horno, roast pork; bistec de cazuela, a stewed beef dish; and relleno negro, turkey in a black paste of charred chillies.

Sweets are made from local ingredients such as honey, coconut and corn, and traditional ice cream is popular, in flavours such as coconut, corn and tropical fruits including guanábana and mamey sapote. Restaurants around the main square and along the Calzada de los Frailes serve most of these dishes, though as visitor numbers grow, plainer local places have become harder to find in the centre. Honey is an important product across the peninsula, where the Maya have kept stingless melipona bees for centuries, and it goes into xtabentún, the region's anise liqueur; horchata and fresh fruit waters are drunk against the heat.