Historic Spain, set to a haunting soundtrack
Monument-filled, tourist-empty Extremadura is an unspoiled gem
The flamenco strains were so haunting I asked the quintet of 20-somethings playing guitars on the doorstep of a massive, whitewashed centuriesold church if I could listen for a spell.
“Sure. Want a sip?” one replied, offering the litrona — a one-litre bottle of beer — they were sharing. Then they went back to jamming, their notes echoing up the steep, narrow lane in one of the most monument-filled, tourist-empty cities on the Iberian Peninsula.
Caceres is a highlight of Extremadura, a Spanish region of vast sun-parched landscapes and untouched historical jewels exactly halfway between the evermore-crowded capitals of Madrid and Lisbon, Portugal.
I spent a weekend there last October exploring Roman ruins, climbing up medieval towers and scarfing down plates of the famed local ham without seeing one tour group.
Every stop appealed — especially Trujillo with its castle — but I focused on three must-sees: Merida, Caceres and Guadalupe.
IMPERIAL POWER
The small city of Merida played a role in two of the world’s great empires, Rome’s and Spain’s.
As their provincial capital, Romans filled Merida with public and private showpieces. Centuries later, many of the conquistadores that led Spain’s dominion in the Americas came from this region
(and returned to fill it with palaces).
Just across the two-millenniaold, half-mile river bridge stand a couple of monuments dedicated to Merida by Rome and by its namesake city in Yucatan, Mexico.
Next to the monuments, in a fortress built by a ninth-century emir, I descended the steps of a water cistern decorated with Roman and Visigoth marble panels and carvings of leaves and grapes. Just past the bright-red bullfighting arena, in the Roman Casa del Mitreo, I marvelled at the bright turquoise sea depicted in a 2,000-year-old floor mosaic
representing the cosmos.
There is a Circus Maximus so gigantic you can imagine thousands of spectators roaring as chariots sped down the straight. But what took my breath away was the Roman Theater, its stage wall decorated with exquisitely detailed floral elements and veined marble columns that glowed blue in the afternoon sun.
In the pedestrianized streets of the workaday downtown, I found the Augustus-era Temple of Diana, its huge colonnade framing a porticoed Renaissance palace.
GOLD TREASURE
Caceres’ strawberry-gold walled monumental core hugs a hilltop, with hardly a modern element among slender medieval towers and Renaissance palaces covered in coats of arms. I watched a nun in a white habit and a briefcase hurry under a stone arch, not a selfie stick in sight.
In Plaza de San Mateo, I chatted about U.S. politics through a convent turnstile with the Kenyan sister selling me almond cookies.
Fortified by wild boar tapas and shots of local bellota liquor — made from the same acorns eaten by pigs that end up as Iberia’s best hams — I kept wandering into the night.
SPIRITUAL ESCAPE
The enormous swirling rose window of the Royal Monastery of Guadalupe towers over this tiny, remote mountain village where pilgrims have come for seven centuries to honour the Virgin Mary. Christopher Columbus was among them and the conquistadores brought the devotion to Latin America, where the Virgen de Guadalupe remains widely revered.
I had my last dinner in Extremadura — wild mushrooms, venison stew and homemade custard — in the little square facing the main monastery entrance.
The bells tolled. Then, unbroken silence.