Villa General Belgrano

Villa General Belgrano, a small mountain village of 6,260 inhabitants is named after the creator of the Argentine flag and located in a lush green valley of Calamuchita in the Mountains in the Province of Córdoba in central Argentina. It was founded in the 1930, by two German speculators attracted by its agricultural potential. The Alpine quality of the village attracted immigrants from Germany, Switzerland, Italy and Austria. In 1940, after the Battle of the River Plate, German seaman scuttled and sunk their battleship, the Admiral Graf Spee off the coast of the Montevideo harbour, and 130 of its surviving sailors settled in the village along with the original settlers and landscaped the mountain ranges of Córdoba with red-roofed, wood-frame homes, micro breweries and pastry and chocolate shops which gave it that unique style that characterizes it today. Today, the village survives on a steady flow of tourists with an appetite for German delicacies like apple strudel, leberwurst and spätzle. Oktoberfest here is hailed as the third-most important Oktoberfest site after Munich and Blumenau in Brazil. Newsstands sell the German language weekly, Argentinisches Tageblatt, and the church offers Sunday services in German and Spanish. Like many isolated immigrant communities, Villa General Belgrano has respected traditions that fell out of favor in Germany long ago, however even though the mother tongue can still be heard, it's being lost in time.