San_Sebastián_Bernal
San Sebastián Bernal, better known as Bernal (Spanish: [beɾˈnal] ; from Basque Vernal, "place of stones or boulders"), is a colonial village in the Mexican state of Querétaro. It was founded in 1642 by Spanish soldier Alonso Cabrera.[1]
Bernal is located 40 minutes by road from state capital Santiago de Querétaro and two and a half hours from Mexico City.[2] It is located in Ezequiel Montes municipality, a few minutes from Colón and Cadereyta.[2]
It has a current population of 2909, of which 1377 are males and 1532 are females. A total of 1014 persons are counted as Economic Active Population and there are only 630 inhabited homes in town.[3]
It is known for its enormous monolith of massive rock, the Peña de Bernal, the third highest on the planet.[2]
According to chronicler Omar Ortega Paz, its names in the Otomi language (De'hendo) and in Chichimeca (Ma'hando) have the same meaning: “In the middle of two”.[4]
In 2005, Bernal was designated a Pueblo Mágico ("Magical Town") by the Mexican Secretariat of Tourism (SECTUR).[5] The Magical Towns are admitted for being localities that have magic symbolic attributes, legends, history, transcendental facts that associate in each of its cultural manifestations, and that today mean a great opportunity for tourism.[2]
