Garrovillas de Alconétar

The colonnade throws shade at eye level, stone arches tapering into timber beams that have turned silver with age. Sit on the granite rim of the fountain, look east, and the whole of Garrovillas tilts gently towards the reservoir that swallowed its Roman bridge. At 327 m above sea level, the air is thinner than on the Andalusian coast but thick with the smell of encina woodsmoke drifting from kitchen chimneys. This is not a village that shouts; it murmurs.

A Plaza You Can Read Like a Book

Plaza Mayor was never designed for the camera. The façades are uneven—one house ochre, the next faded rose—because each generation patched its half according to the price of plaster that year. Walk the perimeter at 08:30 and you’ll pass the baker sliding trays of hornazos into an oven fired since 05:00, two vets discussing sheep prices under the arcade, and a British couple unfolding an OS-style map of Extremadura they bought online. Coffee costs €1.20 if you stand at the bar; €1.60 at the outside tables. The waiters don’t mind which you choose, but they will correct your pronunciation of “café con leche” without malice.

The porticoes were built so medieval merchants could weigh grain out of the sun. Today the same stone benches host Wi-Fi refugees from Madrid who have discovered that mobile signal is strongest beside the 16th-century shield of the Carvajal family. No-one charges for parking inside the walls; leave the car by the hospedería and the keys in your pocket. The only thing you’ll trip over is the occasional perro asleep across the threshold.

What the Reservoir Gives and Takes

Six kilometres north, the embalse de Alcántara stretches like a steel sheet thrown across the Tajo valley. When water levels drop after a dry summer, the arches of the Puente de Alconétar emerge like half-open jaws. Built in the 2nd century, it carried the Vía de la Plata’s traffic—silver, wool, soldiers—until the 1960s hydroelectric scheme drowned it. Locals time their walks: September and October offer the best chance to stand on Roman stones without wellingtons. Even when the bridge is submerged, the interpretation board beside the service road explains why the structure’s elliptical arches were revolutionary. Read it, then drive five minutes to the mirador where griffon vultures use the thermals above the dam. Bring binoculars; the birds couldn’t care less about people, but they do look enormous close-up.

Bread, Lamb, and the One Restaurant Rule

Garrovillas has one proper sit-down restaurant, Torre de Floripes, on the north side of the square. The menu is bilingual but the translations feel like afterthoughts—order by pointing at whatever the next table is having. Thursday is migas day: fried breadcrumbs laced with chorizo and grapes. The dish arrives in a clay bowl the size of a cricket ball; it is salty, crunchy, and exactly what you want after a morning’s walking. Lamb shoulder is slow-cooked until the bone slides out like a bookmark. Expect to pay €14–16 for a main; house red is €2.40 a glass and tastes of blackberries and graphite. If the restaurant is closed—Tuesday night in winter, random fiesta afternoons—you are left with bar tapas. Ask for pincho de morcilla; the blood sausage is spiced with pimentón de la Vera and comes grilled, not fried, so it doesn’t ooze.

Walking Where the Wheat Talks

Leave the square by Calle La Fuente and the tarmac turns to dirt within 200 m. The Ruta del Tajo is a way-marked loop of 8 km that dips through dehesa and returns along the reservoir shore. Spring arrives late this far inland—mid-April brings a haze of cerulean lupinus and the first bee-eaters. The path is mostly flat but wear proper shoes; farmers scatter fist-sized flints to firm up the mud. You’ll pass a stone hut with a tin roof that sells cold beer on the honour system: drop coins into the tobacco tin, take a bottle from the plastic tub. No-one watches; the tally is clipped to the door each night.

Autumn smells of bruised figs and gunpowder from the montería hunts. Wild boar are plentiful; so are cortijos whose owners will offer a glass of aguardiente if you ask directions. Politeness demands you accept, sip once, then tip the rest onto the soil so the host can refill. The loop takes two hours at British strolling speed, longer if you stop to photograph the reservoir’s floating pontoons where cormorants dry their wings like black washing.

When the Village Lets Its Hair Down

Fiestas here are family affairs rather than tourist spectacles. San Pedro, at the end of June, means a procession at 21:00 sharp, dulces de San Pedro (anise doughnuts) handed out by girls in white dresses, and a verbena that lasts until the generator runs out of diesel. Visitors are welcome but there are no wristbands or tourist prices; buy a €3 raffle ticket from the old man with the straw hat and you might win a ham. Semana Santa is quieter—no hooded confraternities or amplified wailing. Instead, the faithful carry three baroque pasos in silence, the only sound the shuffle of feet and the occasional cough echoing off the stone walls. Temperatures at night can dip below 5 °C even in April; bring a fleece if you plan to watch.

How to Arrive, and When to Leave

The A-66 Ruta de la Plata sails past 18 km west of the village. Take exit 523, follow the EX-390 for twelve minutes, and the walls appear on a low ridge like a beige crown. Public transport is non-existent; without a car you would need a €35 taxi from Cáceres. That remoteness keeps the square free of coach parties but it also means you can’t just bail out if it rains. Spring and autumn deliver 22 °C afternoons and cool nights; August climbs past 38 °C and the fountain becomes the village bath. Winter is crisp, often 10 °C in sunshine, but the hospedería switches on heating only after dark—pack socks.

Check out is 12:00, but no-one rushes you. The baker will have palmeras fresh at 09:00; eat one on the church steps and watch the swallows stitch the sky. Then drive north, crest the hill, and the reservoir glints like polished tin. In the rear-view mirror Garrovillas shrinks to a single line of arcades, the square that never asked to be famous and, mercifully, still isn’t.