Mata de Alcántara

The church bell strikes eleven and the only other sound is a blacksmith’s hammer somewhere behind the stone houses. In the main square a single table is occupied: two elderly men in flat caps, a half-finished botella of red wine, and a dog that has heard it all before. This is Mata de Alcántara at mid-morning, a place that fits inside a single photograph yet still manages to surprise drivers who took the wrong turning after Alcántara town eighteen kilometres back.

Stone, cork and pork fat

Most houses are the colour of dry toast, built from local granite and roofed with curved Arab tiles that turn mossy in winter. There is no ornate plateresque façade, no mirador for selfies; instead you get solid walls half a metre thick, tiny windows to keep out the July furnace, and doorways still marked with the family initials carved when the place was rebuilt after the 1755 Lisbon earthquake. Walk downhill from the church and the lane narrows until it feels like a medieval drain; turn a corner and the view opens straight onto dehesa, the cork-oak pasture that pays the village’s bills.

The economy runs on three things: pigs, cork and pensions. Iberian hogs root under the oaks from October until the montanera ends in March; their hind legs will reappear two years later as £90 jamón in Madrid delicatessens. Cork stripping happens every nine years in high summer, the trunks peeling like sunburnt shoulders. The rest of the year is maintenance: repairing stone walls, clearing firebreaks, keeping the dirt roads graded so the 4×4 trucks can reach the herds. Visitors expecting artisan cheese shops will be disappointed; locals sell chorizo from chest freezers in back kitchens, wrapped in white paper and priced by the kilo.

A bridge that demands second gear

Leave the church plaza, follow the lane past the last house and you hit the Río Alcántara – more puddle than river by late summer, but wide enough to need a bridge. The Romans obliged: a single granite arch, just wide enough for a modern car, with no parapet and a camber that forces oncoming traffic into the river if nerves fail. The stone is polished smooth by two millennia of iron tyres, wooden cartwheels and, more recently, Michelin radials. Meet a tractor here and someone is reversing 200 metres; the local rule is “whoever is closest to the middle keeps going”, which works because everyone knows each other. Walk across instead and you can see the tooling marks still crisp on the voussoirs – a reminder that the legions built for eternity, not for tourism.

On the far side the tarmac stops and a sandy track continues into Portugal. This is the smugglers’ road remembered by grandparents: coffee, tobacco and cheap cloth came north during Franco’s siege economy, then reversed direction when duty in Portugal rose. Nowadays the contraband is mainly cheap diesel in jerry-cans, though the Guardia Civil insist the trade died with the euro. The track makes a pleasant twenty-minute stroll at dawn when wild boar prints are fresh in the mud and the only human trace is a discarded Ducados packet.

What you can eat, if you plan ahead

Mata has one bar, two if you count the summer-only venta on the cricket pitch. Both open at seven for coffee and churros, close at three, reopen at eight, and shut completely on Mondays. Menus are chalked in Spanish; the closest thing to a translation is the proprietor’s daughter waving a phone with Google Translate. Order carrillada – pork cheek stewed with pimentón until it collapses – and you get a clay bowl, a fork, and half a baguette to mop the sauce. Vegetarians can have eggs, salad, or eggs on salad. The wine is local Toro and costs €2.50 a glass; bring cash because the card machine only works when the 3G mast feels like it.

For self-caterers the village shop sells tinned tuna, UHT milk and a surprisingly good Manchego aged by someone’s cousin in La Mancha. Better idea: ring ahead and ask Carmen (house with green shutters, second on the right after the bridge) if she has cheese. She produces a wheel of quesado de la Serena, soft enough to spread on toast and milder than the industrial stuff sold in Cáceres markets. A quarter wheel costs €8 and lasts three days in a cool hotel room, should you have one.

Time your visit or bake

Spring arrives late; by mid-April the oaves are neon green and night temperatures still dip to 6 °C. This is the sweet spot for walking: six-hour circuit south to the abandoned mill, back along the ridge where Spanish imperial eagles nest. Take water – there is none en route – and a stick to dissuade the village dogs who believe the lane is theirs. Autumn is equally gentle, the grass blond, the cork stacks drying by the roadside. Winter is short but sharp; Atlantic fronts bring horizontal rain and the houses huddle into their own chimneys. Summer is for mad dogs and Englishmen only. At 45 °C in the shade the stone walls radiate heat until midnight; sensible locals sleep, then emerge at nine to gossip under the municipal streetlamp that passes for nightlife.

The practical bit, without sugar-coating

You need a car. Public transport ceased in 2020 when the regional bus company went bust; a taxi from Cáceres costs €60 each way and the driver will tell you so with theatrical shrug. Fill the tank before you leave the city – the nearest pump is 25 kilometres east in Alcántara town and it closes at eight. Bring euros; there is no cash machine and the shopkeeper will not accept pounds, Monzo cards or Bitcoin. Mobile coverage is patchy: Vodafone works on the church step, EE disappears entirely, O2 flickers between one bar and none. Sunday lunchtime everything shuts; if you arrive at two expect to wait until five for even a coffee.

Allow ninety minutes to see the village, another hour if you walk the Roman bridge loop. Stay longer only if you have a sketchbook, a bird list or a profound need to disconnect. The upside is silence so complete you can hear your own pulse; the downside is realising why half the houses are shuttered – their owners left for Madrid in 1965 and never came back.

Drive away slowly

Leave by the same road you entered, but pause on the ridge where the EX-390 crests. From here Mata de Alcántara is a smudge of terracotta roofs floating in an ocean of oak. The bell tower still dominates, the bridge is a pale line across the ravine, and a single column of wood-smoke rises from somebody’s lunch. Five minutes later you reach the N-521, indicator flashing towards Cáceres, and the twenty-first century reasserts itself with lorries, Spotify and a petrol station selling £2 sandwiches. The village will be back there doing nothing much, which is exactly how it prefers things.