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, The Search Continues

Since early 2009, as part of our own Grand Tour of Europe, we have been drawn time and again to the Iberian Peninsula in search of the real Spain and in November 2010 we returned once more, flying to Madrid and planning a short three night stay in the city of Ávila about one hundred kilometres north west of the capital city.

Spain was not, generally, part of the traditional European Grand Tour and until the twentieth century only caught the attention of the braver or more rugged of travellers and writers. For many it was too primitive, too mountainous and just too dangerous, prone to violent upheavals, inhospitable weather and without acceptable restaurants or decent amenities. ‘To travel in Spain you need three francs a day and a gun’ said one Frenchman who accompanied Alexander Dumas on a mid nineteenth century trip to the peninsular. For the sons and daughters of the English Aristocracy Spain did not have the sophisticated allure of France, the Renaissance treasures of Italy or even the ancient charm of Greece and very few people ever considered crossing the Pyrenees into a land perceived to be full of fanatical Jesuit priests and lurid tales of bandits and cut-throats.



What a pity because, as I have now discovered over the past two years, they were passing up on the opportunities of marvelling at Baroque Seville, the Hanging Houses of Cuenca, the walled fortresses of Ávila and Ciudad Rodrigo, the historic cities of Toledo and Salamanca, the numerous Royal Palaces that surround Madrid and the rich heritage of Roman and Moorish Spain with the largest remaining Roman aqueduct at Segovia and what was once the second largest Mosque in the World at Cordoba.

Right up until the 1950s Spain was considered to be a place for the courageous because it was different and mysterious with a hostile geography, haughty aristocratic grandees and destitute peasants, Romany gypsies and blood thirsty customs. Travellers and visitors were often inclined not to regard it as part of Europe at all and it was often considered, on account of its Moorish heritage, dark skinned people and unfamiliar customs, as part of Africa or of the east. The Spanish themselves understood this perception of their peninsular and in the 1960s “Spain is different“ used to be the slogan of Spain’s international tourism campaign.

Sadly, even today, for many, Spain means only a fortnight’s karaoke holiday spread out on the golden sands of the Costas with a bottle of sun cream and a jug of sangria without any real attempt to understand the geography, the history or the culture of the country. But for those with imagination and an appetite for an experience of real Spain then the airports of Valladolid, Seville, Santander and Madrid are the places to begin a quest to find the Spain of the shrines, the Spain of the Knights-errant, the Spain of the Mosques, castles and mighty cathedrals as well as the Spain of the real castanet clicking flamenco dancers, Spanish guitars and matadors and bull fights as opposed to the ersatz versions of the holiday resorts.

The Easyjet plane flew over the Spanish coast at Santander and we could see the snow capped Picos de Europa Mountains soaring majestically through the low cloud which then immediately closed in and smothered northern Spain and Castilla y Leon completely. The land was completely obscured from view breaking only over the peaks of the Sierra Guadarrama and briefly revealing mountain towns and villages, rivers and shimmering blue reservoirs. A few minutes later around mid morning we landed in a misty Madrid where the temperature was struggling to reach double figures and after the formalities of border control went straight to the Sixt car rental desk.

Since my complaint about Sixt and winter tyre charges in Germany earlier this year I have been in regular correspondence with the Company Customer Services Manager for the UK and this led to the issue of a Sixt platinum account which gives me certain privileges such as discounted prices, speedy pick up service and on this occasion an upgrade from a Volkswagen to a BMW and we were delighted when we took possession of a shiny white 1 series, left the airport and pointed it in the direction of the mountains and the sunshine.

Sierra de Francia in the Gredos Mountains

Actually as it turned out it would have been a whole lot better if the wind had continued to blow because when we woke in the morning there was a thick mist and the city was completely obscured from view from the hotel windows. It was all rather spooky but above it we could make out pale blue sky so this made us more confident than we really had a right to be about the day.

After breakfast it was still misty so we were forced to abandon our plans to return to Ciudad Rodrigo for blue-sky photographs and set off instead to visit the historical city of Salamanca. Because it was earlier than we had anticipated we decided to take a scenic route rather than the direst Autovia de Castilla. Leaving the city for the last time we took the road signposted towards Béjar in a southeasterly direction towards the Gredos mountains and in particular the Sierra de Francia, one of the ranges belonging to the Sistema Central, the mountain range that separates Spain in two.

At first the road was long and straight as it cut through a flat landscape of livestock farms and woods that were slowly beginning to emerge from the swirling mists of a November morning. As we drove through a succession of quiet towns the sun began to poke through and the sky started to turn blue. After a while we hit the edge of a national park with pine covered mountain slopes and then deciduous woods of alder, oak, pine and ash in splendid autumn finery that made it look like a field of gold. The road became more difficult as we entered a series of hairpin bends with glorious views over the valleys and mountain passes below.

I had miscalculated the driving distance towards our turn for Salamanca and we seemed to keep going forever but the journey and the scenery was magnificent and another valuable Spanish geography lesson. Eventually we reached the road juction we were heading for and turned northeast towards Salamanca. At first the road continued to twist and turn but after a few kilometres we dropped quickly back down to open range and the agricultural plain and started to pick up speed and make good progress.

We drove through fields of grazing avileña negra ibérica cattle, jet black and with nasty looking horns and occassional blanca cacereña, white and apparantly endangered but good meat. Flocks of sheep enjoying good quality grazing grass and oak planations with Black Iberian Pigs gorging themselves on acorns in preparation for being turned into the Spanish gastro speciality Jamón ibérico. We were enjoying good weather now but after about thirty kilometres we ran into a thick bank of fog that blotted out the sun and didn’t shift all the way into Salamanca.

Castilla y Leon – Rivers, Dams and Lakes

After a while it became clear that we were going in the wrong direction so after consulting the map we turned around and took a turning that we had previously missed and suddenly we had found the Embalse de Almendra, a huge cobalt blue reservoir with the waters held back by an enormous concrete dam. The reservoir behind the dam covers eighty six square kilometres and contains two and a half billion cubic metres of water. The dam itself is more than half a kilometre wide and as a height of two hundred metres and was one of General Franco’s major engineering projects. It was strangely quiet and felt almost abandoned and it clearly had not been working for quite some time because the water levels were so low so I suppose that on account of this there was no need to have any staff on duty.

I had begun to suspect that this was not the glacial lake that we had been seeking, firstly because we were still in the Province of Salamanca when we should have been in Zamora and then because the lake we were looking for was a natural feature and this one clearly wasn’t. This didn’t really matter because it was serene and beautiful, the sun was shining and the big white clouds reflected in the lake made the sky look the starting line of a sailing boat regatta and the beauty of this place confirmed that behind the ugly concrete coastal strip Spain is a remarkably diverse and stunning country.

The time was getting on now and we were hungry and thirsty so we started on the way back to Ciudad Rodrigo via Trabanca, Vitigudino and Lumbrales but there was nowhere to stop and this was the first time that I can remember that I have driven three hundred kilometres in one day without finding a single shop, café or bar that was open along the way. Just south of Lumrbrales we stopped at the little village of San Felices de Los Gallegos where there was a castle that predictably wasn’t open but there were some nice views across the open fields and a pleasant walk around the sleepy streets and then we returned directly to Ciudad Rodrigo.

We arrived back at about four o’clock and went straight to the bar Arcos and sat at a pavement table with the first beer of the day and a couple of dishes of tapas and then we walked for a while around those parts of the wall we hadn’t seen two days previously and there was a good finish to the day when the wind dropped away completely, the clouds stopped coming in and the sky turned a luxurious late afternoon blue. That night we ate at the Hotel Conde Rodrigo again and enjoyed another fine meal and when we returned to the hotel the sky was clear and punctuated with stars and we were confident of more sun in the morning.

A Washout in Portugal

It was only a short journey along the Autovia de Castilla and within half an hour we were crossing the border into Portugal. We hadn’t brought our passports with us but this wasn’t a problem and at the border checkpoint we were waved through by the border guards who were more interested in the freight lorries that were passing through. We were heading for the city of Guarda, about thirty kilometres away, but the closer we got the worse the weather became and by the time we arrived the city was completely obscured by grey clouds and drenching rain so we carried on by and continued our drive through a gloriously wooded ravine with spectacular views on both sides. We were heading for the town of Covilhã but as this is one of the highest towns in all of Portugal there was no sign of any improvement in the weather as we drove into the clouds and we really didn’t fancy wandering around in the rain so we turned the car around and returned to Spain.

As we approached the border the weather started to improve and as we crossed through the clouds opened like curtains and shards of sunlight broke through again and for a few kilometres we drove in bright sunshine again and we were pleased to see the black disappearing in the rear view mirror as we returned to Ciudad Rodrigo. On the way we stopped at a curious roadside supermarket, which turned out not to have the things we really wanted but did have an interesting section selling rifles and ammunition.

The sun didn’t last long and when we returned the sky was a milky white and it was quite cool so a little later than planned we looked for somewhere for lunch. This wasn’t easy because it was mid afternoon siesta time so there was not a lot of choice but we found a small place down a side street that was still open where we had some tapas dishes and a cerveza.

After lunch we walked around the honey coloured streets but we had to concede that the fine weather had given up for the day and with cloud thickening all the time in what was becoming a very dreary sky we returned to the hotel where we had a drink in the bar, Kim thrashed me at cards and watched a massive rain storm that made us glad to be inside.

For evening meal we went to the Hotel Conde Rodrigo. It wasn’t open at eight o’clock when we arrived and they told us to come back in half an hour. It didn’t look very busy and I think they rather hoped that we either wouldn’t bother or alternatively would find somewhere else instead. But we weren’t going to be put off that easily so after a drink in the Plaza Mayor we returned and were indeed the only customers in the place. We were glad however that we hadn’t been diverted because the hotel served an excellent menu del dia and at a very reasonable price.

In the night it rained heavily again and there was a dramatic electrical storm and in the early hours of the morning we were worried that prospects didn’t look good for the next day.

Ciudad Rodrigo

As a consequence of a severe Atlantic storm we woke to a hissing wind and dark scowling clouds that the mountains of Portugal had failed to detain storming in from the west. It was mean and moody but there was no rain so that was a bonus. From the hotel balcony it was possible to appreciate just what a land of contrasts Spain really is. This was about as far away from the traditional view of Spain of the holiday brochures as it is possible to get and it was different to from our visit the previous month to Castilla-la Mancha. Here we were getting close towards green Spain in the north with more small farms, livestock, deciduous woods, fast flowing rivers and Portugal just twenty-five kilometres away, which was where we planned to visit later.

Breakfast was a simple affair and as we were the only people in the breakfast room it soon became clear that we were the only two guests in the hotel. Afterwards we dressed appropriately and took the walk alongside the river and into Ciudad Rodrigo. The sky was blue but filling up with dark purple clouds with occasional shafts of sunlight darting through. There was a spiteful wind that stung our ears and although it was a nice walk it was along a very muddy path and we were glad that we hadn’t attempted it last night in the dark.

The path took us along the Rio Águeda, which is a two hundred and fifty kilometre long river which begins to the south in the Sierra de la Mesas, near the Portuguese border and flows through Ciudad Rodrigo and after serving as the border with Portugal for its final few kilometres joins the Douro at Barca d'Alva to the north.

As we climbed the outside of the city walls the wind strengthened and thankfully scattered the black clouds somewhere towards Salamanca to the east and they were replaced with friendlier white cotton wool ball clouds that raced in to take their place. We entered the city through the western gate cut into the fortifications and entered a charming place overflowing with history and character.

This place reminded me of the Richard Sharpe stories of the Peninsular War. In January 1812 Ciudad Rodrigo was besieged by the British Army under Wellington and held out for two weeks before the French forces surrendered. Ciudad Rodrigo was strategically important because it guarded the northern route into Spain for an invading army but it was only a second class fortress with a ten metre high main wall built of inferior masonry, without flanks, and with weak parapets and narrow ramparts. After the fall of the city the Allied troops disgraced themselves by the wanton sacking of Ciudad Rodrigo when many homes were broken into, property vandalised or stolen, Spanish civilians of all ages and backgrounds killed or raped, and many officers were shot by the men they were trying to bring to order.

It was quiet enough today however and once inside the walls we walked to the castle, which predictably is now a Parador hotel, had a look inside and then walked around a part of the walls. A few spots of rain forced us down into the city, past the cathedral and into a tourist information office with the heating set to an unnecessary maximum and then on to the Plaza Mayor in the centre with its warm sandstone coloured buildings, metal balconies and traditional Spanish shops and bars around all four sides.

The weather was changing by the minute and after the little shower the sky was blue with clouds that had no time to stop and spoil it because they were driven away swiftly by the wind. It was nice enough to sit outside at a pavement café and have a drink while we planned what to do with the rest of the day. We hadn’t seen all of Ciudad Rodrigo but we decided to leave some for another day and feeling optimistic about the weather prospects decided to go to Portugal for lunch so we returned to the hotel to pick up the car.

Castilla y Leon

A few weeks after returning from Castilla-la Mancha to the south of Madrid we were returning to Spain and this time to Castilla y Leon to the north of the capital. We had been here in March this year to Ávila and Segovia but this time we were going further north and west, flying in to Valladolid and staying in the small city of Ciudad Rodrigo. We had been looking forward too this because Castilla y Leon is as far away from the coastal strip as it is possible to get and is home to half of Spain’s cultural heritage sites including seven UNESCO World Heritage Sites, over two hundred castles and eleven magnificent cathedrals. It is the birthplace of the Spanish language, which after Chinese and Hindi is the third most common language in the World just ahead of English.

We had a late morning flight and the plane took off into a crisp blue sky with scattered clouds over fresh green fields and autumn gold deciduous woods that looked as though they were lying under a generous sprinkling of brown sugar. As we flew south the clouds increased and there was nothing to see until we began to descend toward Valladolid where they began to break into various patchy fragments and below us we could see large colourful fields, russet, grey, cream and yellow broken now and again by bottle green forests, shimmering blue lakes and occasional villages with ochre tiled roofs.

Valladolid airport is only small with limited facilities but there was a sign apologising for this and promising imminent improvements. We collected a steel grey Seat Ibiza from the Avis rental car office and set off immediately on the two hundred-kilometre drive to Ciudad Rodrigo.

There were plenty of things to stop and see along the way but it was mid afternoon and we were in a hurry to get to our destination so we took the Autovia de Castilla and with virtually no traffic to share the road with had an easy journey all of the way. As it was Sunday and we worried about shops being open we stopped as soon as we could at a motorway service station and bought beer, wine and snacks and then carried on. We were crossing the Meseta, the great central plain of interior Spain, which at two hundred and ten thousand square kilometres makes up forty percent of the country and has an average altitude of six hundred and fifty metres. It is split in two by the Sistema Central, the Guadarrama and Gredos mountain ranges, creating Old Castile to the north (Castilla y Leon) and New Castile to the south (Castilla La Mancha). The northern 'submeseta' is the higher of the two at over eight hundred metres and coming from below sea level in Lincolnshire I worried that we might require oxygen cylinders.

After about half way we passed by Salamanca and we could see its golden coloured cathedrals standing proud and high above the city and after that the landscape began to change. We left behind the pretty coloured fields and entered a different environment of green fields and woodlands and more and more livestock. After a couple of hours of really enjoyable motoring we came to Ciudad Rodrigo, which is the last city in Spain before reaching Portugal, a fortress city built to protect the western border of the country and as we approached we could see the walled city and its fortifications standing on a rocky outcrop in a commanding defensive position.

I knew roughly where the hotel Molina de Águeda was and as we kept an eye open for directions Kim had another navigational fluke and spotted a half hidden sign that signposted our destination. As we pulled into the car park there were a few spots of rain but it came to nothing and there were blue skies above us as we unloaded the car and went inside to reception. It was a very nice hotel indeed located in an old water mill on the river Agueda, elegantly refurbished and surrounded by woods and we had a good room on the front with a nice view of the river and the old city about a kilometre away.

http://www.hotelmolinodelagueda.com/

We rested for an hour, drank the beer and wine and nibbled on the snacks and then prepared to go out for evening meal. We debated whether to walk or drive and decided that driving was the preferred option so drove into the town and being unfamiliar with the street layout made a couple of attempts at parking before finally stopping and walking through one of the city gates into the old town.

It was a pleasant evening, not cold, but the sort of temperature when local people need to put on a coat, hat and scarf but shirt sleeve weather for those of us from northern Europe with thicker blood. We needn’t have worried about finding somewhere to eat because there was plenty of choice and the place was really busy with families out for a Sunday night on the town. We found a lively tapas bar where everyone was watching the ‘You’ve been framed’ bullfighting show that we had seen last month in Chinchón and the place was really hectic. We were the only overseas visitors in the place but we didn’t feel uncomfortable and we found a table and ordered food. Unfortunately they were so busy that they made a mistake with the order and we only got half of it but it didn’t matter, we weren’t especially hungry anyway and at least it made it a cheaper night out.