Linares, Nuevo León
Linares is a small city in the state of Nuevo León, Mexico. It is the administrative center of the Linares municipality and the largest urban area in the orange belt region. The city covers about 20.6 square kilometers and had around 70,000 residents in 2020. The wider municipality is much larger, spanning about 2,445 square kilometers, and lies in the eastern part of the state on the border with Tamaulipas. An enclave of the municipality is the town of Hualahuises.
Linares was founded on April 2, 1712, and was named after Fernando de Alencastre Norona y Silva, the Duke of Linares, who was the Viceroy of New Spain at the time. The city has a small industrial park and is well connected by highway to Monterrey and the Gulf of Mexico, making it a gateway to southern Nuevo León.
The area is part of the orange belt. Linares and its surroundings inspired Sofía Segovia’s 2015 novel El murmullo de las abejas (The Murmur of Bees). The town is also where the norteño band Los Cadetes De Linares began in the 1970s.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 06:57 (CET).