Extremadura, Spain: Land of the Conquistadors

I was standing on the square of Trujillo, looking up at the statue of Francisco Pizarro and wondering: “Just what kind of mincemeat would he have made of Mrs Merkel?” There was a time when Spaniards didn’t take any nonsense from the rest of the world. They were conquering much of it.

Pizarro himself vanquished the Incas with, it is said, 180 men and 27 horses. Cortés didn’t have many more when he bagged Mexico. Francisco de Orellana went seeking cinnamon and discovered the Amazon. Vasco Núñez de Balboa was the first European across the New World to the Pacific.

One may imagine how they might have reacted to diktats from Brussels or Berlin. These were unyielding fellows, a disproportionate number of whom, including all the above, came from the equally unyielding Extremadura. Hard against the Portuguese frontier in the Spanish south-west, the region reckons itself the Land of Conquistadors.

I’d gone back to Trujillo, Pizarro’s home town, precisely to remind myself of the country’s prime. So I was on the sloping square, watching storks return to their belfry nests (they’ve not yet mastered the art of landing gracefully), and looking at the local hero. Up on a horse, with sword drawn, he had a country-conquering aspect.

Back in the early 16th century, Extremadura hadn’t held much for men like him, the bastard son of a minor noble. The region had been tough, empty and poor since the Romans. When tales of fighting and wealth came back across the Atlantic, Extremaduran boys were early to the boats. If we can now travel through most of central and southern America in one language, bullfighting as we go, it is largely due to these back-of-beyond villagers.

By 1535, Pizarro had subdued the Inca empire, killed its emperor Atahualpa, taken Atahualpa’s sister as mistress and founded Lima, all with fewer than 200 men. These included his three half-brothers; the conquest of Peru was a family affair.

Fitting, then, that the tale is told in the old Pizarro family home, at the top of Trujillo. It’s a modest spot, about the size of an artisan’s house.

From the first-floor museum, it’s clear that firearms, horses and the flu virus swung it for the conquerors. Dissensions within the Incan empire helped. So did Pizarro’s superior ruthlessness. As was said: “Atahualpa was planning to have Pizarro for lunch, but Pizarro had him for breakfast.”

Pizarro’s dad was, incidentally, nicknamed El Largo. “He was well-endowed and fathered children with many women,” explained my Extremaduran friend Marco, whose knowledge was unquestionable: he’d recently won €24,000 (£18,900) on a Spanish television quiz show.

Trujillo’s old quarter isn’t much changed since El Largo was operational. It rises steep, stony and sinuous, the paved streets barely two donkeys wide and open to two-way traffic. Pedestrians find themselves pinned to doorways more often than they might wish.

We stumbled down past the family homes of blokes who did great things in Bolivia, Ecuador and elsewhere and into the Plaza Mayor. This is as enchanting as any in Iberia: all steps, arcades, stately trimmings, and storks wheeling over Pizarro. As often in Spain, there is a sense simultaneously of gravitas, fragile grandeur and impending festivity. Spanish people really know how to colonise urban space, and at all hours.

Conquistadors finished, we romped around the rest of Trujillo, from Moorish castle and ramparts up top to the gate through which the Reconquista Christians poured in 1232. The gate was sufficiently preserved to serve in scenes in Ridley Scott’s movie 1492. In truth, most of central Trujillo could star in any historical film you cared to shoot. It is intact because lives lived there have never generated sufficient money to wreck it.

Thus, it is now popular with the 21st-century rich – weekenders from Madrid converting the old stones to their needs, and those who can afford a minimum of £4,500 a week for the Villa Martires. This is the most overwhelming rental property I’ve ever stayed in. Created from ruined outbuildings of the nearby castle, it’s a sort of Downton-for-Don-Quixote, and on a not dissimilar scale.

My wife burst out laughing when she saw we could have hosted the Wimbledon final in the main salon. Well, we could have, had it not been for the antique furniture, fresh flowers, chandeliers and obstacle course of treasures. We regularly lost contact with one another through the labyrinth of other salons, reception rooms, tennis courts and a kitchen equipped to the teeth, with sinks the size of bathtubs. “My mother never raised me to this style of living,” she said when we finally located both each other and a bottle of wine, and made for the garden terrace.

“You play Camilla, I’ll play Charles and we’ll fit right in,” I said. Then we studied a view as remarkable as any other aspect of the house. Under a vast sky, the scorched tableland rolled away enormously, interrupted here and there by tough hills, and then Portugal.

This was a land to gallop across with a band of desperate brigands. Lacking same, we drove off with Marco through the dehesa lands of holm oaks whose acorns feed the pigs that feed the world Ibérico hams.

Distant farmsteads floated upon the vastness and could, perhaps, have sailed off somewhere quite different by tomorrow. Gradually, the countryside grew loftier and greener and we were curving up to Guadalupe, a fine monastery trimmed with a hillside village.

It was here, in 1492, that King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella gave Columbus the go-ahead, thus inaugurating the entire New World Spanish venture. He repaid them by bringing back a pair of souvenir Indians. They were baptised (“Cristóbal” and “Pedro”) in the stone font that now tops the village fountain. But the monastery’s real claim to world attention is as home to the Virgin of Guadalupe. This Virgin has, since 1928, been patron of the whole Spanish-speaking world despite having been discovered, in the late 13th century, under a dead cow.

We were soon among more beauty than I could readily assimilate. Magnificent mudéjar cloisters gave way to chambers boasting illuminated chant books the size of a pope, exquisitely embroidered cloaks and chasubles, then works by Goya, El Greco and the local lad Zurbarán. The sacristy was so fabulously frescoe’d that it all got too much for one of our group. “Forthwith, I’m going to erase the Holy Church from my life,” he cried. “All these riches, all useless!”

You could see his point. Sell off the monastery contents and you’d clear Spain’s external debt. “Silence!” said the guide, for we were being ushered into the presence of the Virgin. Most of the time, she oversees the church from 80ft high in the altarpiece. But we had climbed up behind and were now on her level. A monk swivelled her round to face us. She is about 20in tall and, because she is made of cedar, almost black.

The queen of all Spanish-speaking peoples peers out from the richest-possible robes of red and gold, though the “unspeakable sweetness of her countenance” (as per brochure) is putting it a bit high.

And then on the track of Hernando Cortés, an anti-hero of mine since youthful days spent in Mexico. Now I wanted to be reminded of his birthplace. Shortly, we were back on the flatlands amid surprising fertility. As Marco reeled off statistics about irrigation, rice and tomatoes, we turned into Medellín.

Almost immediately, we were standing where the Cortés family home had stood. You can’t miss it. The house has been knocked down to make way for the village square, and a statue of Hernando marks the spot. A fine statue it is, too, though probably offensive: Cortés’s left foot is planted on an Aztec’s head. Other than that, though, Medellín ignores its connection with one of the world’s greatest warriors. Perhaps they’ve got their hands full with all that rice and tomato production.

Over coming days, we roamed the tableland – so mesmerisingly huge and empty that cattle came as light relief. At some stage, we bobbed into Cáceres, an Extremaduran showpiece. The old walled centre evolved from the Romans to the Renaissance, then stuck. So you may experience quite a slab of Spanish history as you wander the stairways and alleys.

You may also experience one of the world’s finest wine cellars, at the Hotel Atrio within the warren. The Atrio’s cooking is two-star Michelin, extraordinary enough in such a remote outpost. But the wine cellar… well!

Ask politely and the owner might show you round a selection of his 25,000 bottles. Everything is here, including verticals of all the great wines you’ve ever heard of, from Petrus via Vega Sicilia to Romanée-Conti. Star of the show is an 1806 Château-d’Yquem — which, should you go mad, would add €150,000 (£118,282) to your meal bill.

I would have stayed all day, but we had to go, though not very far. We should, at least, have attempted the Roman aspects of Mérida, or the rocks and gorges of the Manfragüe National Park where imperial eagles and griffon vultures perform nature’s best-choreographed food search. But, while the heads said: “Yes”, the rest of us said: “Really?” and we returned for dinner on the square in Trujillo.

Low-lit at night, the plaza buzzed gently. Everyone, from tots through to grandparents, was out. Pizarro was now but a silhouette. “I’d still back him against Mrs Merkel,” I said. “With a sword, certainly,” said my wife, before returning to her calderata lamb stew.

Getting there

Fly to Madrid. Try BA (ba.com); Iberia (iberia.com); easyJet (easyjet.com) and Ryanair (ryanair.com). Rhino Car Hire (rhinocarhire.com) has cars from Madrid airport from £11 a day. The drive from the airport to Trujillo takes two-and-a-half hours, on toll-free motorways.

Staying there

Next door to the magnificent Villa Martires (see main text), which sleeps four, the British-run Trujillo Villas has a garden cottage (sleeps six) from £1,950 a week. Rent both together, thus sleeping 10, from £6,450 a week. Four other top-end properties around town start with an artist’s studio that sleeps two, from £495 a week (trujillovillasespana.com). Alternatively, try the recently renovated Hotel Casa de Orellana in the conquistador’s house on Trujillo’s Calle de las Palomas (casdeorellana.com; double rooms €120/£95 b & b).