El Madrigaleño

El Madrigaleño is a farming village in the north of the municipality of San Blas, Nayarit, just under a kilometer from the edge of Guadalupe Victoria (La Virocha), the main town of this part of the municipality, and counted among its annexed communities. It sits only about 4 meters above sea level on the flat plain of the Río Grande de Santiago delta, with the river about 2 kilometers to the north, El Carleño a kilometer to the northeast and Aután a little over 2 kilometers to the east. The port of San Blas is about 19 km away by road, under half an hour by car.

Unlike many villages of the area, it has been growing: the census counted 724 people in 2005, 793 in 2010 and 834 in 2020, living in 236 occupied homes, which makes it the twelfth largest locality in the municipality. About one in five residents was born outside Nayarit. People here work the ejido land, mostly beans, and El Madrigaleño was among the villages whose farmers asked the state in 2023 for help leveling their fields after bad seasons; the area is also certified as a zone of low prevalence for fruit flies. Schools, shops and the area's food stands are a short walk or ride away in Guadalupe Victoria.

Life here is not without problems. In 2025 residents of El Madrigaleño, El Carleño and other communities around Guadalupe Victoria said they would turn again to the federal environmental agency over the municipal open-air dump near an estuary, which they say sends smoke over the villages when it burns and leaches into the nearby shrimp farms. For a visitor, El Madrigaleño is simply a glimpse of the farm country between San Blas and the Río Grande de Santiago, easily combined with a stop in Guadalupe Victoria and the back road north toward Mexcaltitán. The climate is hot, about 25 °C on average, with the heaviest rain in August.