Villagrán

For almost two centuries this town was called El Guaje, after the watering hole where people brought their cattle to drink. It was an Otomí community, and on 9 October 1718 a decree by the viceroy, the Duke of Arión, formally founded it as La Purísima Concepción la Conquistadora del Guaje; the street plan was laid out on 4 May 1721. In 1910 Governor Joaquín Obregón González raised it to a villa under the name Encarnación Ortiz, still part of Cortazar municipality. It was the residents themselves who voted on 4 March 1923 to call it Villagrán, and in 1930 the state legislature created the municipality.

The town now has about 28,000 people, at 1,730 metres on the plain between Celaya and Salamanca. The building that dominates the centre is the parish church of La Purísima Concepción, a large church of mixed styles begun on 23 July 1868 and not finished until 29 June 1913. The chapels of the Virgin of Guadalupe and of San Martín Caballero and a small local museum round out a walk. The municipal coat of arms, painted by the Celaya muralist Manuel Lara, is drawn on a background of a tule reed mat, since weaving mats was for a long time the town's main trade; a group of families of Otomí descent still make petates and baskets.

The day that draws the biggest crowds is 6 January, the feast of the Rey Justo Juez. The image is more than a century old and has been kept by the Vallejo Loria family since the Cristero War, when it had to be taken out of the churches; it now has its own chapel. On the day there is a mass at La Purísima Concepción, a procession to the chapel and a street market in the surrounding blocks, with pilgrims from Querétaro, Michoacán, Puebla, Mexico City and the north. The town also marks Holy Week, with the washing of the feet and the crucifixion staged on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, a Corpus Christi fair, San Isidro Labrador on 15 May and the Immaculate Conception on 8 December.