Spain 2011, The Plaza Mayor

We were staying at the Hotel Retiro del Maestre, a renovated old Spanish nobleman’s house on a street leading to the main square and we found it easily and left the car in the underground car park. It was a friendly family run hotel with spacious and comfortable public rooms, a large outside terrace basking in the sun and was a nice room for us with a view over the garden.

It was late afternoon by this time and with the sun beginning to dip we didn’t linger long but made our way quickly to the Plaza Mayor to find a bar. On the way we passed by the equestrian statue of the Conquistador Diego de Almagro and then entered the rectangular Plaza. At a hundred metres long and forty metres wide and flanked on both sides by arcades of Tuscan columns supporting overhead galleries all painted a uniform shade of green and fully glazed in a central European style this place is truly unique in Spain. These galleries were originally open and used as grandstands for public events, religious festivals and even bullfights that were held here until 1785, when they were finally banned by King Carlos III.

We choose a table on the sunny side of the Plaza, ordered beer and wine and just sat and watched the activity while we nibbled the inevitable olives. The bar owner shooed away some small boys playing football, telling them to play elsewhere and families began to arrive and the bar quickly filled up with chattering customers. Walking around the square was a proud grandmother pushing a young baby in an immaculate pram which matched her pristine outfit and she completed at least a dozen circuits, stopping frequently to chat and to show off the small child to anyone who showed the slightest interest.

The Plaza Mayor is the most important part of a Spanish town or city and I really cannot think of an equivalent in the United Kingdom where we have public squares but use them in an entirely different way. This is the place where people meet, relax and enjoy themselves; it is generally flanked with shops and restaurants and usually has the town hall and the main church somewhere close by. When we arrive somewhere new it is usually the first place we make for because sitting with a glass of wine and a complimentary tapas it is the best place to be to get a feeling for the town and its people.

In the search for real Spain (not the coasts and the Costas), in the past three years we have visited and enjoyed dozens of Plaza Mayors; Madrid, the largest, Salamanca, the second largest, Toledo, next to its towering cathedral and the tiled Plaza de España in Seville. We liked them all and we began now to compile a list with a view to choosing our top five favourites. We considered Ávila, Mérida and Valladolid, Cáceres and Santiago de Compostella in Galicia but after a lively debate weighing up the pros and cons and putting forward the case for each one in turn we finally agreed on the top five but could not reach consensus on the actual order.

So this is our list: Segovia in Castilla y Leon because of the Cathedral and the architecture and the little streets running away from it like spokes from a wheel, Trujillo, where we had been only today, because of its unspoilt medieval charm, the unpretentious and functional Ciudad Rodrigo, Chinchón with its open balconies and bullfights and although we had only just arrived we liked this place so much that we both agreed to include Almagro in the list.

After a second leisurely drink we paid up and left the square and strolled back to our hotel where we asked for some dining recommendations and the receptionist convinced us to go to her favourite just a couple of streets away so after we had rested and changed we took her advice and found the restaurant in a side street off the main square.

It was nice if not conventional and it had a modern menu with some new twists on traditional meals and I have to say that I wasn’t prepared for rare pork. The sight of a pork chop oozing blood really wasn’t to my taste at all and because I have always thought that anything to do with a pig should be cooked right through it almost spoilt the evening for me as I worried about food poisoning and salmonella and trying to remember the location of the immodium tablets in the suitcase!

Although it wasn’t especially late when we finished the meal, we were tired after a long day that had started three hundred kilometres away in Mérida, taken us to Trujillo and then a three hour drive to Almagro and we were ready for bed. We walked back through the Plaza Mayor that was lively in a subdued sort of way (if that makes sense) and then to the street to the hotel. About half way along we heard Spanish guitars and the clack, clack of castanets and we wondered where it was coming from and then through the pavement level window of a cellar we could see a dancing class in full swing. Some local people suggested that we should go inside and watch so we did just that and before the lesson ended we enjoyed fifteen minutes of genuine Spanish music played by a sort of flamenco skiffle group and a group of young people dancing in true Castillian style.

It was a great way to end the evening!

Spain 2011, The Dehesa of Extremadura and the Olive Groves of Castilla-La Mancha

The journey began well enough and we left Trujillo and started to drive south towards the N430, the main road from Mérida to Ciudad Real but after a few kilometres the satnav found us a shortcut. There was nothing wrong with this at first but at the town of Campo Lugar, which seemed to be somewhere in the middle of nowhere the tarmac road abruptly stopped and became a pot holed pitted shale track that went on for about ten kilometres. I was for turning back but Kim persuaded me to carry on and I conceded and drove with care as the road continued to deteriorate the further we went. I had resolved not to fall out with the satnav lady this week but this part of the journey severely tested my promise to keep calm. Eventually we came to a junction and a proper road and soon we were motoring towards our destination.

Through the east of Extremadura we passed through the oak tree plantations of the dehesa where the land is carefully cultivated and managed. ‘Dehesa’ is the name given to the seemingly endless areas of farmland consisting of groves of low density, mature oak trees because of the poor quality of the soil. Around half of the land of Extremadura is taken up by these dehesas and the spaces between the trees are used to cultivate cereals and as pasture for grazing livestock. The tree species is predominantly evergreen Holm, with Cork Oak grown on richer, more humid soils and at the base of the mountains. Several grades of tree coverage occur with the most open and more easily cultivated holding up to fifteen oaks per hectare, intermediate covering has up to thirty oak trees per hectare and the densest plantings thirty to fifty trees per hectare.

This part of the journey was reminder of just how big Spain is as we motored for mile after mile without meeting any other traffic or without passing through towns or villages. The road just kept grinding endlessly on in an easterly direction in a way that reminded me of the tortuous journey through Andalusia in a clapped out Ford Escort in 1986. The road had no lay-bys, picnic areas or service stations and I was glad that I had topped up the tank earlier in the day as we had left Mérida.

Eventually we passed out of Extremadura and into Castilla-La Mancha and the landscape abruptly changed and what had been a long straight road before now began to twist and turn as we climbed and dropped through undulating hills, river valleys, past huge reservoirs and through vast olive groves. The oak trees had gone now and there were olive trees as far as the eye could see.

This shouldn’t have been surprising because Spain is the world’s leading producer of olives and is by a long way the country with the highest number of olive trees (more than three hundred million), is nowadays the world’s leading olive and olive oil producer and exporter and the world’s leading producer of table olives, which explains why cafés and bars are always so generous with a plate of olives to accompany every drink. Of the two million hectares of olive groves in Spain, 92% are dedicated to olive oil production. The average annual production varies due to the cyclical nature of the harvest, but typically runs between 600,000 and 1,000,000 metric tons, less than a quarter of which is exported.

Olives are gathered from late November to the end of March, depending on the area and the year’s weather. Harvesting is a painstaking task and is done by hand, or with a stick to shake the fruit onto tarpaulins arranged around the tree (it is sometimes done with a mechanical tree shaker, though this can damage a tree). Looking at all of those trees that process must provide plenty of work at harvest time!

By late afternoon the journey was becoming tedious and tiring as we counted down the kilometres to Ciudad Real and Almagro just beyond as we passed through fields of grain decorated with drifts of scarlet poppies and more and more villages as we approached the city. We didn’t stop in Ciudad Real, which was a bit rude, because we were keen to get to our destination and once past the minor traffic hold up in the city we relaxed and enjoyed the last few motoring minutes as we approached our destination.

Spain 2011, Trujillo and the Spanish Conquistadors

Trujillo, on the Tozo River, a tributary of the Tagus, is sited on the only hill for miles around and about forty kilometres east of Cáceres. Although the Autovia passes close by it is not an especially busy tourist city so when we drove in and followed signs to the Plaza Mayor we found parking ridiculously easy just a few metres away from the main square.

The pace of life in the plaza was delightfully slow with a just a few visitors wandering around and others sitting with local people in the bars and cafés around the perimeter. It was pleasantly warm but I would suspect that in high summer this large exposed granite space can become the Sun’s anvil and it would be important to find a spot in the shade.

All around the square there are grand palaces and mansions and outside the sixteenth century Iglesia de San Martín in the north-east corner is the reason why, a great equestrian statue of the Spanish conquistador, Francisco Pizzaro. It is an interesting coincidence that many of the sixteenth century explorers and adventurers who carved out the Spanish Empire in South America came from Extremadura and as well as Pizzaro, Hérnan Cortés, who defeated the Aztecs and founded Mexico, Hernando De Soto, who explored Florida, and Pedro de Almagro, who accompanied Pizzaro, all came from this south-west corner of Spain.

Francisco Pizzaro was born in Trujillo and became a conquistador who travelled along much of the Pacific coast of South America. He encountered the ancient Incan empire and brutally and quickly conquered it , killing thousands of natives, including the Inca King and stealing immense hoards of gold, silver, and other treasures for the King of Spain and for himself. As a consequence of Pizzaro’s adventures, Spain became the greatest, richest and most powerful country in the world at the time and as well as conquering Peru and founding the city of Lima, he also added Ecuador and Columbia to the Spanish Empire thus providing immense new territories and influence and spreading Roman Catholicism to the New World.

We walked out the Plaza Mayor and followed the steep cobbled lanes as they twisted their way up past buildings constructed of attractive mellow stone, past the Parador and more churches and mansions until finally we were at the top at the Alcázar of the Moors who controlled this city for five hundred years before the reconquest. Inside the castle we walked around the high stone walls and stopped frequently to admire the uninterrupted views over the dehesa of Extremadura spreading endlessly in every direction in a patchwork of agricultural green, gold and brown.

Walking back down to the plaza was a great deal easier than the energy sapping climb but we got lost in the cobweb of tiny streets and surprised ourselves by emerging at an unexpected entrance to the square which was jam-packed with cars on account of it being the end of school for the day and parents were collecting their children to take them home. It was a little past lunch time and we were overdue something to eat so we examined the menus at the pavement restaurants and when Kim was satisfied with our choice we found a seat in the sun and ordered some local dishes and a glass of beer.

As the Plaza slowly emptied and peace and quiet was restored it was nice sitting in the sunshine enjoying the sights of the square in a city blessed with great architecture and a theatrical history but mercifully not overrun with tourists. It was lovely and if I was planning the trip again I am certain that I would squeeze at least an overnight stop in Trujillo into the itinerary and we would have stayed longer this afternoon but we had a long drive ahead of about two-hundred and fifty kilometres because now it was time to start to drive back east towards Castilla-La Mancha which was going to be about a three hour drive.

Spain 2011, Mérida, World Heritage City (3)

The breakfast was even more disappointing than the previous day so we didn’t spend to long over the meal and finished as quickly as we could before returning to the room, packing our bags in preparation for leaving and then returning to the streets of the city to see the last remaining sites.

The reason that Mérida has so many Roman antiquities is that it was a very important city in the Empire. The Roman conquest started as early as year 19 B.C. with the invasion of the Carthaginian region and ended with the last resistance in the northwest in the same year. The south soon came under the Roman Empire’s growing domination with a framework of roads connecting towns and strategic bridges and Iberian cities including Mérida, Cordoba, Seville and Cartagena passed into the hands of the Romans.

The economy flourished under Roman rule and, along with North Africa, served as a bread basket for the Roman market, and, as well as grain, it provided gold, wool, olive oil, and wine. Agricultural production increased with the introduction of irrigation projects, some of which remain in use even today and much of daily life consisted of agricultural work under which the region flourished, especially the cultivation of grapes and olives. Silver mining within the Guadalquivir River valley became an integral part of Iberian society and some of the Empire’s most important metal resources were in Hispania where gold, iron, tin, copper and lead were also all mined in abundance and shipped back to Rome.

Spain also has historical and political significance for the Roman Empire because it was the birthplace of the Emperors Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius, Trajan, Theodosius I and the philosopher Seneca and in the year 306, Spanish bishops were the heads of the Council at Elivira. Luckily, when the Roman Empire fell, it didn’t create such a major crisis or havoc in Spain as it did in other western countries like Gaul, Germany and Britain and thus much of its essential infrastructure remained intact.

Next to the river there were some excavations but to be honest we found these a bit disappointing so we hurried through them and walked to the river and walked along a pedestrian walkway back to the Roman bridge and then back towards the main square. We were looking now for the Temple of Diana and we found it tucked away behind the main shopping street and next to a small museum. The Temple was a sacred site constructed by the Romans in the first century A.D. and remains well preserved mostly because in the sixteenth century some local big-wig built a palace inside the rectangular ring of Corinthian columns. There has been some recent debate about removing the palace structure but as this is over five-hundred years old as well the archaeologists and the authorities have decided that it should stay.

We were over an hour ahead of schedule so we had a last drink in the main square while we waited for the car to be returned from the out of town car park and when it was there we went back to the hotel and checked out.

Our plan now was to visit the town of Trujillo that we had missed two days ago because of changes to our itinerary on our way to Cáceres and after we had stopped for fuel we drove north skirting the Parque Naturel de Cornarvo but to be honest there was little to get excited about across the flat dusty plains of Extremadura as we drove the fifty kilometres or so towards our destination.



Spain 2011, Extremadura and Jamon Iberica

Extremadura is an unspoilt part of the country made up of lush forests and majestic mountains, far removed from Spain’s crowded Costas both in terms of distance and character. It is one of Spain’s most sparsely populated regions, roughly the size of Belgium, and its distance from the coast has kept mass tourism at bay and relatively few tourists, either from Spain or elsewhere, venture to this western region of the Iberian Peninsula, sandwiched between the mountains of Portugal and the wide central plains of La Mancha.

We drove relentlessly west across vast agricultural plains peppered with towns and hamlets truly presenting us with glimpses of the real Spain, which is what we were keen to see. Beyond the fortified walls of the historic cities there are vast tracts of unspoiled countryside which attract flocks of rare birds from all over Europe and beyond. One of the most extraordinary sights in the whole of Spain is that of the region’s immense population of storks which build their huge nests on top of everything from palaces and telegraph poles to church spires and convent roofs.

The population of storks in Spain is rising, from six thousand seven hundred pairs thirty years ago to an estimated thirty-five thousand pairs today. In fact there are now so many White Storks in Spain that it is now second only to Poland who with fifty thousand birds has traditionally been the country with the most in Europe. This increase in numbers has been so dramatic that the conservation status has been changed from amber to green. Extremadura itself is believed to be home to more than eleven thousand storks along with many other rare and protected bird species which flourish in the nature reserves of the Province.

After a while we crossed the mighty Tagus and the road turned south with the Guadalupe Mountains to the east and the Monfrague National Park to the west. This it turns out is one of the most important raptor reserves in Europe and is the best place in Spain for a glimpse of Black Vultures and the rare Spanish Imperial Eagle. We kept a sharp eye out for a rare sighting but although we saw Buzzards, Hawks and Kites we didn’t see the rarer birds which sensibly keep well away from the road!

We drove through fields of grazing Black Iberian Pigs gorging themselves on acorns in preparation for being turned into the Spanish gastro specialty, Jamón ibérico. Iberian ham products are processed throughout Extremadura, making this region the country’s leading producer and in a sparsely populated region about a million hectares of open range are used by over one thousand-five hundred livestock breeders.

One of the fascinating things about the world’s great food is the way they are a product of geography and history combined into one mouthwatering gastronomic experience. The western provinces of Spain are a good example. About eight hundred years ago, it was decreed that every village would be responsible for maintaining a mixture of grass for grazing; cork trees for firewood; and holm oaks for shade, building materials and acorns. This woodland prairie, in effect a man-made ecosystem, once covered 90% of the region and while it is now much smaller, the dehesa, as it is called, still provides one of the world’s greatest hams: jamon iberico de bellota.

Bellota means ‘acorn’, and it so happens that the native black-hoofed pigs are remarkably fond of the vast piles of nuts that fall each autumn from the branches of the holm oaks. At this time of year, the cattle and sheep are shut away, and the pigs are turned loose to roam, snuffle and above all eat to their heart’s content. After two months of devouring up to ten kilograms of acorns a day, they roughly double their body weight. In winter the pigs are slaughtered and the legs cured with sea salt. Remarkably, though, the fattest animals are not yet even halfway through their journey from prarie to plate. The acorns on which they have been feeding are rich in oleic acid, the same fatty acid found in olives this means that their meat can cure for far longer than ordinary hams, from eighteen months to two years or even more.

Sold with its black hoof still attached, as an indication of its origins, it is kept on a special stand and carved into the thinnest of slices, to be served with a couple of eggs for breakfast, as evening tapas with a glass of salty fino sherry, or as a light lunch with crusty country bread and a little manchego cheese.

The ham of Extremadura is one of the best in the world and has won all the top awards. It is known as Pata Negra in Spain. Extremadura’s government had the “Dehesa de Extremadura” trademarked by the European Union in order to control the high quality standards and to prevent it from being counterfeited.

At Trujillo we left the Autovia de Extremadura and took the road to Cáceres across more open range with little sign of life until we reached the outskirts of the city, passed through the University quarter and then along an avenue with carefully manicured sycamore trees, all universally shaped, and then after driving into the old town and finding no vacant parking spaces we followed signs to an underground car park at the very edge of the old town.