Villabuena de Álava/Eskuernaga

Villabuena de Álava is a municipality located in the province of Álava, in the Basque Country of northern Spain. It is famous for its production of top quality wines. The village has 48 wineries ranging from small family-owned businesses to larger bulk-production wineries. The centre of the village contains one of the oldest and most decorated churches in the Basque region, the Church of Santa María de Villanueva. Nearby is Hotel Viura, a boutique hotel.Civic architectureVillabuena features long, parallel streets, which follow the contours of the river valley, where the parish church stands. One of the outstanding aspects of the municipality are the many renaissance houses, patrician houses, and small palaces adorned with coats of arms, built between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries.The House of the IndianThe Palace of Peciña Samaniego is known as "The House of the Indian". It was built by Andrés de Bença, between 1608 and 1610, for Pedro Peciña Samaniego, archdeacon and canon of Santiago de Compostela. The palace was built on a rectangular plan with a ground floor, an apartment above, and a tower that is accessed through a semicircular arch. The tower features two more semicircular arches, forming a gallery. A relief decorates the key of the arch. Some of the original Carlists of the region, like Francisco de Paula Rivas, stayed in the apartment.