Piornal

At 1,175 metres, Piornal is the highest village in Extremadura. The thermometer on the pharmacy wall often reads ten degrees cooler than Plasencia down in the valley, and when the fog rolls in you could swear you’re in the Pyrenees rather than western Spain. Stone houses with wooden balconies line lanes so steep that delivery vans leave their engines running. Even in August, locals keep fleece jackets slung over chair backs; by October the first wood smoke drifts through the air.

This is not a village that courts visitors. English is scarce, the nearest cash machine is 25 km away, and the Monday bus from Plasencia carries more groceries than tourists. Yet that indifference is precisely what makes Piornal absorbing. Life revolves around livestock, cherries and the shifting moods of the Sierra de Gredos, not around souvenir stalls or multilingual menus.

A calendar ruled by weather and turnips

Most foreigners who have heard of Piornal know it for the Jarramplas festival each January. For two days a devil-figure in a rainbow-tasselled jacket parades through the streets while the entire village pelts him with turnips. The origins are murky—some say the monster represents a cattle thief, others a Christian martyr—but the effect is unmistakable: bruised vegetables carpet the lanes, children slide across them like marbles, and by nightfall the smell of crushed radish hangs in the air. Accommodation for the fiesta is booked a year ahead; if you miss out, the neighbouring hamlet of Garganta la Olla has spare rooms and runs shuttle taxis uphill.

Spring brings a gentler spectacle. From late March the valley’s cherry orchards bloom in successive waves, working their way up the slopes until Piornal’s own trees finally erupt in white. Photographers arrive clutching long lenses, but even on blossom weekends you can escape the convoys by walking the track that leaves from behind the church. Within fifteen minutes the crowds are replaced by blackbirds and the occasional shepherd on a quad bike.

Summer is walking season. Trails strike out directly from the square: one hour of steady climbing brings you to the Chorrera de los Litueros, a waterfall that becomes a shaded rock pool deep enough for a bracing dip. Serious hikers continue eastwards onto the high ridges where griffon vultures circle and, if you’re lucky, a Spanish imperial eagle drifts overhead. Maps are free from the tiny tourist office—really just a desk inside the town hall—but the woman who staffs it expects you to ask in Spanish and will quiz you about footwear before she stamps your route card.

What you’ll eat and where you’ll sleep

Evenings are for calories. The village’s two restaurants both serve chorizo al vino tinto—fat, mild sausages stewed in local pitarra wine—and patatas revolconas, a mash of potato, paprika and crisp pork belly that tastes like nursery food given a Spanish passport. Vegetarians aren’t forgotten: Casa Rural El Piornal does a smoky version of migas using chestnut flour and grapes instead of bacon. Cherries appear in June, simply served with fresh goat’s cheese and a drizzle of honey from hives that spend the summer at 1,500 metres. The wine list is short; order the young pitarra and it arrives in a squat bowl-shaped glass designed, they claim, to stop it slopping out on the ride down from the vineyard.

Places to stay are limited to a handful of stone cottages converted into casas rurales. Interiors mix exposed granite walls with under-floor heating—essential because night-time temperatures can drop to single figures even in July. Book directly by phone or WhatsApp; websites tend to list rooms as available when they’re already gone. If every bed is full, the neighbouring village of Tornavacas has a small parador with valley views and a bar that understands gin-and-tonic proportions.

The practical grind

Getting here without a car requires patience. Fly to Madrid, take the train to Plasencia, then catch the Monday or Friday Avanza bus that climbs the EX-203. Off-season there are only two services a day; miss the 14:30 and you’re spending the night in the valley. Hire cars make more sense—Plasencia agencies offer compact manuals for around €35 a day—but the final eight kilometres are a sequence of tight switch-backs with unfenced drops. Arrive after dark and you’ll reverse every time a pick-up appears round a bend.

Once you’re installed, everything is walkable, but bring cash. The village shop, Balcón del Valle, will give cashback if you buy water or cheese, yet the minimum spend is €20 and the card machine fails whenever the temperature falls below zero. Vodafone has the only reliable signal; if you’re on EE or Three, expect to communicate via WhatsApp over the town-hall Wi-Fi, which switches off when the secretary goes home at 15:00.

Weather can sabotage the best-laid plans. Low cloud erases the famous valley views for days at a time, and when the easterly wind arrives you’ll taste Portugal in the air. Pack a fleece even in August; locals laugh at sunburnt Britons shivering over supper because they assumed Spain equals heat. In winter the road is occasionally closed by snow—glorious if you’re equipped, isolating if you’re not.

Leaving the altitude behind

Piornal won’t suit everyone. Nightlife is a choice between the bar that shows football and the one that doesn’t. The church is handsome but not spectacular, and if you dislike dogs you’ll tire of the village’s loose pack of mastiffs that escort walkers to the last house and then turn back. What the place offers instead is a slice of Spain that package tours skipped: a settlement where the bar menu changes according to what the hunter next door shot yesterday, and where the mayor still opens the town-hall balcony at dusk so teenagers can count shooting stars.

Come for the blossom or the turnip fight, come to walk the high pastures where no one will ask for your ticket, but come prepared. Bring Spanish phrases, a pocket of euros and a jacket you can live in for three days. Do that, and you’ll discover that Spain’s highest village is also, in its stubborn, weather-beaten way, one of its most honest.