La Morera

The last mobile-bar signal flickers out somewhere west of the A-5, thirty kilometres before La Morera. From then on the road narrows, the verges turn ochre and the only traffic is a tractor dragging a trailer of cork oak. At 418 m above sea level the village appears not on a ridge or in a ravine but simply sits on a swell of dehesa, as if the land had shrugged and left a handful of stone houses on its back.

A village that still keeps shop hours (and closes them)

La Morera’s single grocery, Colmado Victoria, unlocks at nine and shutters for good at two. Miss that window and supper becomes whatever you can coax from the hotel honesty bar—usually a jar of olives and a bottle of local pitarra wine that costs €6 and tastes like Beaujolais left in the sun. Sunday everything is shut; even the dogs seem to observe the day of rest. British visitors who arrive expecting a mini-market or at least a petrol pump learn the hard way: fill the tank in Trujillo and shop before you leave the motorway. The nearest 24-hour station is 40 km away, and the dashboard fuel light is a lonely companion on these roads after dark.

What the village does offer is a textbook example of rural Extremadura life—minus the textbook. Stone-and-stucco farmhouses line three short streets that all tilt towards the parish church. Its bell tower still marks time for field hands; the six o’clock chime sends swifts swirling above the roofs like black confetti. There are no souvenir shops, no interpretive centre, not even a rack of leaflets. Instead, an elderly man will point you towards the olive press and ask whether you’ve come for the quail count.

Walking without way-markers

The Sierra de San Pedro begins where the tarmac ends. Paths are wide enough for a Land Rover but signed only by the occasional paint splash that might date from the 1980s. That bothers some hikers; others rejoice. A two-hour circuit heads south past Cortijo del Gato, climbs gently through cork oak and returns along a cereal ridge that gives views west to the Zafra grain silos. In April the verges are laced with Spanish iris and the air smells of wet thyme; by July the same route is a dust bowl where boot soles soften in 35 °C heat. Start at dawn if you visit in summer—night temperatures drop to 18 °C and you’ll have the track to yourself apart from a shepherd on a quad bike who will raise two fingers in silent greeting.

Birders rate these tracks higher than Monfragüe, and with none of the coach-party optics. Great bustards can be watched from a fence post without another tripod in sight; black vultures circle at eye level on thermals that rise off the plain. Bring a flask, not a telephoto budget: entry is free and the hides are stone walls built for goats.

Food that remembers the ration book

Teleclub Dani, the only bar, opens at seven for coffee and doesn’t bother with a written menu. Order a beer and the owner, Dani, reels off what his wife has cooked today: migas fried in olive oil with grapes, patatas revolconas (paprika mash topped with crispy pork belly), or presa ibérica grilled medium rare and served on a tin plate. Main dishes run €8-11; the wine list is pitarra, white or red, chilled in an old Pepsi fridge. Vegetarians get a plate of cheese—queso de la Serena, spoonably creamy and less salty than Manchego. Pudding is whatever fruit the orchard yielded; in October that means persimmons eaten with a penknife at the counter.

Dani prefers cash and will follow you to the cash machine if you’re short. Cards sometimes work, sometimes don’t; Vodafone certainly doesn’t, so download an offline map before you sit down or you’ll be washing dishes.

When to come (and when to stay away)

Spring and autumn own the calendar. April mornings touch 12 °C by eight o’clock, perfect for walking before the sun hardens. Olive blossom drifts across the lanes like fine snow and storks clatter on chimney stacks. October brings the harvest: tractors dragging nets rumble through the village at first light, and the air is thick with the smell of crushed olives. Both seasons average 22 °C at midday; you’ll need a fleece after six.

August is a different story. Daytime peaks of 38 °C empty the streets; even the swallows pant on the telephone wires. Accommodation exists—four rooms above the olive mill, fan-cooled, €45 a night—but you will spend most of your time plotting shade. Winter is quiet, sometimes too quiet. Frost whitens the ploughland and the village sinks into itself. If rain arrives the dirt roads turn to chocolate mousse; walkers end up ankle-deep and hire taxis back from the ridge. On the other hand, hotel prices halve and the night sky is absurdly clear—Orion seems close enough to snag on a TV aerial.

The part nobody Instagrams

La Morera will not deliver the white-washed, geranium-draped fantasy sold on Andalusian postcards. Walls are mud-brown, paint peels, and the plaza is a car park for pick-ups. Some visitors turn round within the hour, muttering about “lack of infrastructure”. That is the point. What you get instead is a working village whose calendar still turns on pig slaughter, olive pressing and the quail migration. Speak a few words of Spanish—even halting GCSE level—and faces open. A woman once pressed a still-warm tortilla into my hand because I admired her rosemary hedge; another insisted I taste last year’s pitarra straight from the plastic drum.

Stay overnight and you’ll hear the village go to bed: televisions click off, dogs settle, silence expands until the Milky Way feels noisy. Wake at dawn and you’ll understand why Spaniards describe this region as la España vacía—empty Spain. Empty, yes, but also full of the small generosities that guidebooks can’t list.

Drive away the next morning and the first bar of signal delivers a rush of notifications you never missed. In La Morera the only update that matters is whether the olives will drop before the rain arrives—and that, refreshingly, is somebody else’s harvest.