Extremadura

Overview

Extremadura is Spain’s far west along the Portuguese border, and the reasons to come are specific: the Roman city of Mérida, the granite old towns of Cáceres and Trujillo, and the oak dehesa that raises the country’s best jamón ibérico. The dehesa, open oak pasture grazed by black Iberian pigs and Merino sheep, covers around half the territory and sets the register for everything else: long horizons, holm oaks, storks on the church towers, and very few people.

Two provinces make up the region, Cáceres in the north and Badajoz in the south, with just over a million people spread across 41,634 km², one of the lowest population densities in mainland Spain. That emptiness is the product of a hard history, and it is now the region’s main asset: the towns kept their old centres because nobody had the money to knock them down, and the countryside kept its wildlife because nobody built on it.

This is also where the conquest of the Americas was staffed. Hernán Cortés came from Medellín, Francisco Pizarro and Francisco de Orellana from Trujillo, Vasco Núñez de Balboa from Jerez de los Caballeros. The silver they sent home built the palaces that still line Trujillo’s Plaza Mayor and the old town of Cáceres, a UNESCO site since 1986 and one of the most intact medieval and Renaissance ensembles in Europe.

Mérida holds the most complete Roman city in Spain, a UNESCO ensemble since 1993, with a working theatre that stages a classical drama festival every summer, an amphitheatre, a circus, and the longest surviving Roman bridge anywhere. Monfragüe national park, north of Trujillo, has the world’s largest breeding colony of cinereous vultures, and in winter the dehesa hosts one of Europe’s biggest gatherings of common cranes.

The food is the other draw, and it travels badly, which is a reason to eat it here: acorn-fed jamón from the Dehesa de Extremadura DOP, the runny sheep’s cheeses Torta del Casar and La Serena, and the smoked pimentón de la Vera that colours half of Spanish cooking. Come in spring or autumn; the interior heat from mid June to mid September is serious, and the cities are at their best in April, May, October and the long mild winter.

History & character

Pre-Roman peoples and Rome’s hardest war

Before Rome, the north of modern Extremadura belonged to the Vettones and the west and south to the Lusitani, whose long guerrilla resistance under Viriathus (147 to 139 BCE) ended only when Rome bribed his own envoys to assassinate him. The war left a mark: Viriathus is still invoked as a founding figure on both sides of the Spanish-Portuguese border.

Roman Lusitania

Augustus founded Augusta Emerita, modern Mérida, in 25 BCE as a colony for discharged legionaries, and it became the capital of the province of Lusitania. It grew into one of the great cities of Roman Iberia: theatre, amphitheatre, circus, two aqueducts, the Temple of Diana, and the bridge over the Guadiana that pedestrians still cross today.

Al-Andalus and the frontier

After the Muslim conquest of 711, this was frontier country. Badajoz was founded in 875 by Abd al-Rahman Ibn Marwan as a citadel controlling the passage between Portugal and central Iberia, and the Almohad caliph Abu Yaqub Yusuf rebuilt its fortress in 1169 into the walled Alcazaba you can walk today. Cáceres kept its Almohad walls too; thirty towers from the Islamic period still stand around the old town. Mérida, the old Roman capital, declined through the same centuries.

Reconquest and the military orders

Castilian and Leonese armies took the region piecemeal through the 12th and 13th centuries, and the crown handed enormous tracts of it to the military orders of Santiago and Alcántara. The result shaped Extremadura for centuries: vast dehesa estates run by absentee lords and worked by landless labourers, a pattern of ownership that pushed generations of young men to look elsewhere for a living.

The conquistadors

Elsewhere turned out to be the Americas. The conquest drew on Extremadura out of all proportion to its size. Hernán Cortés of Medellín took Mexico between 1519 and 1521; Francisco Pizarro of Trujillo took Peru in 1532 and 1533; Vasco Núñez de Balboa of Jerez de los Caballeros was the first European to reach the Pacific from the American side, in 1513; Francisco de Orellana, also of Trujillo, made the first navigation of the Amazon. The money they sent back built the palaces of Trujillo and Cáceres, and the Real Monasterio de Guadalupe in the eastern sierras became the spiritual reference point of the whole enterprise; Columbus made his first pilgrimage there after returning in 1492.

Decline, war, and emigration

The imperial boom faded, and from the 17th century Extremadura settled into a long rural poverty at the far end of Castilian Spain. The Civil War hit hard: after Nationalist troops took Badajoz in August 1936, an estimated 4,000 prisoners were shot, many in the bullring, one of the war’s worst atrocities. Under Franco the region was a byword for underdevelopment; Buñuel’s 1933 documentary about Las Hurdes, Tierra sin pan, had already made its northern valleys a symbol of rural isolation. Between the 1950s and 1970s emigration to Madrid, Catalonia and the Basque Country emptied whole villages.

Extremadura now

The autonomous community dates from 1983. The economy is still agricultural at heart, from dehesa livestock to irrigated tomatoes and nearly all of Spain’s tobacco crop, with tourism growing around the UNESCO towns and the birding. It remains one of Spain’s poorest regions on paper, and one of its most likeable in person: unhurried, unpretentious, and genuinely pleased to see visitors who made the effort.

See & do

Cáceres old town

Start here. The walled old town, UNESCO listed since 1986, survived almost untouched because post-imperial Cáceres was too poor to modernise it, and it now reads as a single built document of the 15th and 16th centuries in honey-coloured stone. The Torre de Bujaco on the Plaza Mayor, a 12th-century Arab tower built on reused Roman blocks, is the emblem; behind it the lanes climb past fortified palaces, the Concatedral de Santa María, and the Casa de las Veletas, whose basement holds an Almohad cistern described as the best preserved in the Iberian Peninsula, its horseshoe arches resting on a dozen columns. Go at dusk: the day-trippers leave, the stone goes gold, and the storks take over the soundtrack.

Trujillo

Trujillo is the conquistador town: a sloping Plaza Mayor ringed by Renaissance palaces, with the bronze equestrian statue of Pizarro by the American sculptor Charles Rumsey in the middle and a Moorish-origin castle on the ridge above. The Palacio de la Conquista, built with Pizarro money, faces the square; the church of San Martín closes its upper end. It pairs naturally with Cáceres, 45 minutes away, and the full detail is in the Trujillo guide.

Mérida

Mérida has the most complete Roman ensemble in Spain, UNESCO listed since 1993: the theatre and amphitheatre, one of the best preserved Roman circuses anywhere, the Temple of Diana, the Los Milagros aqueduct, and the Puente Romano over the Guadiana, the longest Roman bridge still in existence. Rafael Moneo’s Museo Nacional de Arte Romano is the building that made his name. The theatre still works for a living: the Festival Internacional de Teatro Clásico fills it through July and August. The city guide covers the sites, tickets and logistics.

Guadalupe

The Real Monasterio de Santa María de Guadalupe sits in the Villuercas sierras of eastern Cáceres province, a half-fortress, half-shrine complex begun in the 14th century, UNESCO listed since 1993. Hieronymite monks ran it from 1389 and built its Mudéjar cloister; Franciscans revived it in the 20th century, and Pius XII made it a minor basilica in 1955. The guided visit takes in museums of embroidery, manuscripts and painting, with works by El Greco, Goya and Zurbarán, in a village of overhanging wooden balconies that earns an overnight stay.

Monfragüe

Monfragüe, the quartzite river gorge where the Tiétar meets the Tagus, is Spain’s headline raptor-watching site and a national park since 2007. The one unmissable stop is the Salto del Gitano rock face opposite the castle crag, where griffon vultures ride the updraughts at eye level. The full natural history is in the nature section below; as a day out, it slots easily between Plasencia, Trujillo and Cáceres.

The northern valleys

North of Plasencia, three green valleys drop off the Gredos foothills, each with a distinct product and season. The Valle del Jerte is cherry country, around 1.5 million trees that flower almost at once in the second half of March and tint the valley white for about a fortnight, a spectacle ranked a fiesta of national tourist interest. La Vera, one valley east, is pimentón country and holds the Monastery of Yuste, where Emperor Charles V retired in 1556 and died in 1558. The Ambroz valley has Hervás and its well-preserved medieval Jewish quarter. In summer, all three run on their gargantas, natural river pools that are the region’s answer to a coastline.

Badajoz province

South of Mérida the sights thin out but stay worthwhile. Badajoz city has the Alcazaba, a 400 by 200 metre Almohad citadel rebuilt in 1169, with the 30-metre octagonal Espantaperros tower and a park inside the walls. Olivenza was Portuguese until 1801 and looks it, with Manueline doorways and a two-language identity. Zafra’s joined arcaded squares, Plaza Grande and Plaza Chica, make it the prettiest stop on the road south to Seville; Jerez de los Caballeros has its Templar castle and Balboa’s birthright. Small fortified villages like Magacela and Berlanga reward a detour if you are driving between them.

Alcántara

Out west on the Tagus, the Alcántara bridge, completed under Trajan, spans the gorge in six granite arches and still carries traffic nearly two millennia on; the town above it was the seat of the military order that took its name. Combine it with the border dehesa of the Tajo Internacional natural park along the Portuguese frontier.

Los Barruecos and the Vostell museum

Some 14 km from Cáceres at Malpartida de Cáceres, the granite boulder field of Los Barruecos, a natural monument since 1996, piles rounded monoliths around shallow lagoons, and one of Europe’s most important white stork colonies nests directly on the rocks; the town was named a European stork village in 1997, and the seventh season of Game of Thrones used the site as a battlefield. On the edge of the boulders, an 18th-century wool-washing complex holds the Museo Vostell Malpartida, founded by the German Fluxus artist Wolf Vostell in 1976: car sculptures, a 16-metre assemblage built around a MiG-21 fuselage with cars and pianos, and works by 31 Fluxus artists, in one of the oddest and best museum settings in Spain.

Towns & cities

Cáceres

Cáceres is the region’s second city, around 95,000 people, and the best base for the north. The walled old town covered in the section above is the reason to come, but the modern city earns its keep too: a lively Plaza Mayor, a proper tapas circuit, and in May the WOMAD world music festival, which stages free concerts in the historic squares. Sleep inside the walls if you can; the old town after 10pm is the point.

Trujillo

Trujillo, 8,611 people, is small enough to see in half a day and good enough to sleep in. Evenings on the Plaza Mayor, after the coaches leave, belong to the swifts and the bar terraces under the Pizarro statue. There is a parador in a former convent if you want the full stone-corridors experience.

Mérida

Mérida, around 60,000 people, is the regional capital and the Roman showpiece; everything is walkable and the ruins are threaded through the working city rather than fenced off from it. See the city guide for the full site-by-site treatment.

Badajoz

Badajoz is the region’s biggest city, around 150,000 people, and its least touristed, a border town facing Portugal across the Guadiana. The Alcazaba and the arcaded Plaza Alta are the sights; the reward is a city that entirely lacks a visitor economy, with prices and crowds to match. Useful as a base for Olivenza and the south, or as a first stop coming from Lisbon.

Plasencia

Plasencia is the market town of the north, with a walled centre, a cathedral that is really two unfinished cathedrals grafted together, and a long-running Tuesday market. Its real role for visitors is as the hub for the Jerte, Vera and Ambroz valleys and the western approach to Monfragüe.

Zafra

Zafra, in southern Badajoz province, is nicknamed Sevilla la Chica, and the compliment is fair: whitewashed streets, the twin arcaded plazas, and a 15th-century alcázar of the Dukes of Feria that now houses a parador. It breaks up the drive between Mérida and Seville better than anywhere else.

Olivenza and Jerez de los Caballeros

Olivenza spent five centuries as a Portuguese town before passing to Spain in 1801, and its Manueline church portals and bilingual street life are unique in the region. Jerez de los Caballeros, further south, stacks whitewashed houses and baroque towers below a Templar castle; Balboa was born here.

Valley villages

In the north, Hervás keeps one of Spain’s best-preserved medieval Jewish quarters, all timber-framed houses above the river. Jaraíz de la Vera is the pimentón capital, seat of the DOP regulatory council. Cuacos de Yuste and Garganta la Olla are the prettiest of the Vera villages, and Guadalupe village wraps around its monastery. All are small; the pleasure is arriving, eating long, and moving on slowly.

Food & drink

Extremaduran cooking is shepherd and dehesa food: pork, lamb, sheep’s cheese, bread, paprika and olive oil, refined by scarcity rather than by courts or coasts. It is also, on the strength of its raw materials, one of the best-value eating regions in Spain.

Jamón ibérico

The regional flagship is Jamón Dehesa de Extremadura DOP, from Iberian pigs finished on acorns during the autumn and winter montanera on the region’s oak pastures. The label to look for is 100% ibérico de bellota, the acorn-fed, pure-breed top grade; cebo de campo and cebo grades are progressively cheaper and less interesting. Any town in the south has a bar that will cut it properly, by hand, in translucent slices. Order it first, before anything else arrives.

The runny cheeses

Extremadura’s two great cheeses are both sheep’s-milk tortas coagulated with cardoon thistle rennet, which leaves a faint pleasant bitterness. Torta del Casar, from Casar de Cáceres, protected since 1999, is aged at least sixty days until the inside turns to a spoonable cream; the ritual is to slice off the top and dip in with bread. Queso de la Serena, its southern cousin from the Merino country of eastern Badajoz province, uses only Merino milk and comes slightly milder; the young creamy version is sold as Torta de la Serena.

Pimentón de la Vera

Spain’s smoked paprika comes from the La Vera valley and its neighbouring comarcas in northern Cáceres province, where the peppers are dried over oak smoke rather than in the sun; the DOP, EU-registered in 2007, is run from Jaraíz de la Vera and covers three styles, dulce, agridulce and picante. A tin from a village shop is the region’s best cheap souvenir, and the smell will relabel every chorizo you eat afterwards.

On the plate

The everyday dishes are few and good. Migas extremeñas, fried breadcrumbs with garlic, paprika and pork, started as shepherd’s breakfast and now anchors bar menus. Caldereta de cordero is the slow lamb stew of fairs and family Sundays; frite is its faster, drier cousin. Cocido extremeño runs on chickpeas, chorizo and morcilla. In autumn the dehesa adds game, venison and partridge above all.

Wine

Ribera del Guadiana DO is the regional appellation, spread across several sub-zones of the Guadiana basin, with Tempranillo leading the reds and local white varieties like Pardina and Cayetana in the whites. Quality has climbed sharply this century and prices have not followed, which makes the house wine gamble unusually safe here.

Nature

Extremadura is the best inland wildlife destination in Spain, and arguably in western Europe, on the strength of three habitats: the raptor cliffs of Monfragüe, the dehesa, and the treeless steppe plains.

Monfragüe

The national park, 18,118 hectares along the Tagus declared in 2007 and a biosphere reserve since 2003, holds the world’s largest breeding colony of cinereous (black) vultures, over 300 pairs, and the highest concentration of Spanish imperial eagles anywhere, more than 10 pairs, alongside over 600 pairs of griffon vultures, Egyptian vultures, black storks and eagle owls. Access is simple: the EX-208 road runs through the park, the Salto del Gitano viewpoint gives you griffons at eye level from the tarmac, and trails fan out from Villarreal de San Carlos, the only village inside the park, population 28.

Dehesa and steppe

The dehesa itself, holm and cork oak pasture over half the region, is a managed habitat that happens to be superb for wildlife, from wintering cranes feeding on acorns to azure-winged magpies year round. The open plains are bustard country; Spain and Portugal hold about 60% of the world’s great bustards, and the dry grasslands of Extremadura are one of the places birders come to watch their spring display.

Mountains and geopark

The Villuercas-Ibores-Jara massif in eastern Cáceres province, around Guadalupe, has been a UNESCO Global Geopark since 2011, folded Palaeozoic ridges with long walking routes and some of the darkest night skies in western Europe, recognised with Starlight certification. In the far north, Las Hurdes and the Sierra de Gata offer slate villages, chestnut woods and river pools; a small corner of Cabañeros national park brushes the region’s eastern edge, with the main park over the border in Castile-La Mancha.

Rivers and reservoirs

The Tagus and Guadiana cross the region on their way to Portugal, both heavily dammed; the Embalse de la Serena on the Zújar is Spain’s largest reservoir by capacity, and the border stretch of the Tagus is protected as the Tajo Internacional natural park. The reservoir shores double as winter bird sites and summer swimming spots, though most locals prefer the colder, cleaner gargantas of the northern valleys. The showpiece garganta has its own protection: the Garganta de los Infiernos nature reserve above the Jerte valley, declared in 1994, where the river has carved a staircase of big circular potholes known as Los Pilones; the reserve climbs from around 600 metres to 2,000 at the Gredos ridge, with ibex, otters and golden eagles for the patient.

On foot

The Vía de la Plata, the old Roman north-south road, crosses the whole region and carries the quietest of the Camino de Santiago routes, through Mérida, Cáceres and on towards Salamanca. Walkers who want ruins with their birdsong can time a stage to pass the Cáparra arch, which the route runs straight through.

Climate

Extremadura runs hot and dry in summer, mild and greenish in winter, with the sharpest seasonal swing of any Spanish region a traveller is likely to visit. The climate chart tells you the averages; what it undersells is the summer extreme.

Cáceres, at 459 metres, averages around 8°C in January and 27°C in July and August, with heatwave peaks near 40°C and above and roughly 540mm of rain a year, almost all outside summer. Mérida and Badajoz, lower down the Guadiana basin, run warmer still. Badajoz counts as hot-summer Mediterranean on paper, but the July numbers speak for themselves: average daily highs around 35°C, a record of 45.5°C, and only about 430mm of rain in a whole year, set against roughly 2,950 hours of sunshine. Winters are mild by Spanish interior standards, with January lows in Badajoz averaging around 3°C, frosty at dawn on the higher plains, often sunny by noon, and this is when the dehesa is at its greenest, since the rain falls between autumn and spring.

The dry-summer pattern has a visual consequence worth planning around. The plains that glow green from October to May turn straw brown by July, the reservoirs drop, and the landscape most photographs of the region show belongs to the cooler half of the year. If green dehesa under big skies is the picture you are after, come between the first autumn rains and late May. Broadly, the further north and higher you go, the greener and cooler it stays; the Guadiana basin in the south is the hottest corner.

The northern valleys behave differently. The Jerte, Vera and Ambroz valleys and Las Hurdes sit higher and catch more rain off the Gredos and Gata ranges, which is why they stay green through summer and why their river pools are swimmable when the plains are baking. If you are visiting in July or August, structure the trip around them: cities at dawn and dusk, gargantas in the afternoon.

When to go

Spring and autumn are the answer; the only real question is which festival or harvest you want to hit.

March to mid June is the best all-round window: the dehesa in flower, raptors breeding at Monfragüe, comfortable city temperatures. The Jerte cherry blossom opens the season in late March. Trujillo’s national cheese fair lands around 1 May, and WOMAD fills the squares of Cáceres with free world music concerts in May.

July and August are for the Mérida festival and the mountain valleys, not for midday sightseeing. The Festival Internacional de Teatro Clásico runs through both months, with performances in the Roman theatre starting at 22:45 once the stone has cooled. The gargantas of the Jerte and La Vera do the daytime work; they are busiest at August weekends, so go midweek or early in the morning if you want a pool to yourself.

Mid September to November is the second window: comfortable temperatures, the wine harvest in the Ribera del Guadiana, and pimentón smokehouses working in the Vera villages. October brings the first cranes and the start of the montanera, when the pigs go out to the acorns.

December to February is quiet, mild and underrated: green dehesa, empty monuments, crane flocks at their peak, and jamón season in full swing. The winter calendar also holds the region’s two biggest and strangest fiestas. On 19 and 20 January, Piornal, high in the Jerte valley, pelts the Jarramplas, a figure in a hand-sewn ribboned suit and horned conical mask, with turnips thrown by the whole village, a rite recognised as a fiesta of national tourist interest in 2014. In February the Carnaval de Badajoz, ranked of international tourist interest since 2022, fills the city for around ten days, with some 7,000 performers in the Sunday parade and crowds estimated at 150,000 in the old town on the big nights. Holy Week processions in Cáceres, Mérida and Badajoz then close the season with the region’s main religious set-piece.

Getting there

Extremadura is one of the few Spanish regions without a major airport, and that filter is part of why it stays quiet. Plan on arriving via Madrid, Seville or Lisbon.

By air. Madrid-Barajas is the practical arrival airport for the north and centre; Seville airport works well for southern Extremadura; Lisbon is the closest major airport to Badajoz, just over the border in Portugal. Badajoz does have its own small airport, 13 km east of the city, with year-round Iberia flights to Madrid and Barcelona, Binter routes to Gran Canaria and Tenerife, and a seasonal Palma de Mallorca service: useful for connections, thin on frequencies.

By train. There is still no true high-speed service into the region. The first rebuilt stretch of the Madrid to Extremadura line, Plasencia to Badajoz via Cáceres and Mérida, opened in July 2022, but it is not yet electrified, so trains are limited to 200 km/h and the journey from Madrid to Cáceres, Mérida or Badajoz still takes roughly four to five hours. The finished line is supposed to bring Madrid to Badajoz down to around two and a half hours, but completion is not expected before 2030, so plan around the current timetable rather than the promised one. Book on Renfe; the route through the dehesa is at least a scenic slow ride.

By bus. Direct coaches from Madrid’s Estación Sur serve Cáceres, Trujillo, Mérida and Badajoz, and often beat the train on time and price. Buses also connect Seville with Zafra, Mérida and Badajoz along the Vía de la Plata corridor.

By car. Driving is the strongest option. The A-5 motorway from Madrid to the Portuguese border passes Trujillo, Mérida and Badajoz; the A-66 (the old N-630, tracking the Roman Vía de la Plata) runs the north-south spine from Salamanca through Plasencia, Cáceres and Mérida towards Seville. From Lisbon, the motorway crosses at Elvas into Badajoz; the border is open Schengen countryside and you will only notice it from the signs.

Getting around

A car is close to essential here. The distances are long, the sights are scattered, and the best of the region, dehesa backroads, valley villages, Monfragüe at dawn, is exactly the part public transport does not reach.

Trains link the main cities a few times a day on the Plasencia, Cáceres, Mérida, Badajoz axis, with a branch towards Zafra; they work for city-to-city hops if you time them, and Renfe has the schedules. The core Plasencia to Badajoz track was rebuilt for the 2022 reopening, so the rides are smoother than the region’s rail reputation suggests, even without electrification.

Buses fill in the towns: regional services run from Cáceres, Plasencia, Mérida and Badajoz to places like Trujillo, Guadalupe, Hervás and the Vera and Jerte villages, but often only once or twice a day, so check the return before you commit.

Driving is easy by Spanish standards: motorways and dual carriageways between the cities, light traffic everywhere, and the only care needed on the narrow valley roads of Las Hurdes, Gata and the Villuercas. Watch for livestock on dehesa lanes and give the road your attention at dusk, when boar and deer move.

On foot and by bike, the Vía de la Plata crosses the entire region and is walkable in marked stages, the quietest of the main Camino routes, with Mérida, Cáceres and the Cáparra arch as its Extremaduran highlights. The cities themselves are all walkable; none needs, or rewards, urban driving beyond finding a car park.

Practical info

For Spain-wide basics, currency, plugs, tipping, entry rules, see the Spain guide. What follows is Extremadura-specific.

Heat logistics. In summer, book accommodation with air conditioning without exception, and shift your day: monuments at opening time, long lunch, sights again after 6pm. Check AEMET heat warnings before committing to a walk; the inland heat regularly exceeds 40°C in July and August. Wildfire risk runs mid June to October; respect trail closures in the sierras and call 112 for any fire.

Old-town parking. The historic centres of Cáceres and Trujillo are effectively car-free. Park in the modern town and walk in; nowhere is the walk longer than 15 to 20 minutes, and attempting the medieval lanes by car will ruin your day and possibly your wing mirrors.

Festival planning. If a specific show at Mérida is the point of the trip, book both the ticket and the room the day plans firm up. The same applies to Trujillo’s cheese fair around 1 May, when a town of 8,600 hosts crowds in six figures.

Birding without a plan. You do not need a guide for a first taste: the Salto del Gitano viewpoint in Monfragüe is on the road with free parking, and winter crane flocks are visible from public roads across the dehesa between Cáceres, Trujillo and the reservoirs. For imperial eagles, bustards or serious photography, book a local guide in Cáceres, Trujillo or Plasencia.

Dark skies. The Villuercas geopark and Monfragüe hold formal dark-sky recognition, and light pollution across rural Extremadura is among the lowest in western Europe; on a clear moonless night you get the Milky Way from any dehesa lay-by.

Language. Castilian Spanish is universal, and English is thinner on the ground than in coastal Spain; a few phrases go a long way. Around Olivenza and the border villages you will hear Portuguese, a legacy of the frontier’s long two-way history.

Shopping that makes sense. Buy pimentón in the Vera villages, above all Jaraíz de la Vera, where the DOP is headquartered; buy torta cheeses vacuum-packed to survive the journey; and buy jamón sliced and sealed rather than attempting a whole leg in carry-on.

Emergencies. The main hospitals are in Badajoz, Cáceres, Mérida and Plasencia; 112 covers everything, everywhere, in the usual Spanish way. Mobile coverage is good in the towns and patchy in Las Hurdes, the Villuercas and parts of Monfragüe, so download offline maps before a mountain day.