Gazing in reflective mood upon those magnificent memorials of Roman rule at Merida, one is tempted to wonder whether, after all, the silent ruins (with a stork’s nest on each parapet) do not yet point the true way to Estremenian prosperity—IRRIGATION (plus energy—a quality one misses in Estremadura).
Trujillo
Founded 2000 years back (by Augustus Caesar), this out-of-the-world city has a knack of periodically dropping out of history—skipping a few centuries at a time—meanwhile presumably dragging on its own dreamy unrecorded existence, “by the world forgot,” till some fresh incident forces it on the stage once more. There were stirring times here while, for near a thousand years, the upland vegas were swept and ravaged by three successive waves of foreign invasion. Then Trujillo relapsed into trance, skipped the middle ages, and awoke to find at its gates another foreign foe—this time the French.
And the city reflects these vicissitudes. The Roman fortress, magnificent in extent and military strength, completely covers the rugged granite heights, imposing still in crumbling ruin. Forty-foot ramparts with inner and outer defences, bastions and flanking towers, machicolated and pierced for arrow fire, crown the whole circuit of the koppie. Signs of ancient grandeur everywhere meet one’s eye; but contrasts pain at every turn. For filthy swine to-day defile palaces; donkeys are stalled in sculptured patios whence armoured knight on Arab steed once rode forth to clatter along the stone-paved ravelins that led to the point of danger. From mullioned embrasures above, whence the Euterpes and Lalagés of old waved tender adieux, now peer slatternly peasants; crumbling battlements form homes for white owls and bats, kestrels, hoopoes, and a multitude of storks such as can nowhere else be seen congregated in a single city. The sense of desolation is accentuated by finding such feathered recluses as blue rock-thrush and blackchat actually nesting in the very citadel itself.
The citadel marks the era of war. The Goths followed and despised fortifications. Their ornate palaces, enriched with escutcheons and sculptured device, lie below, outside the Roman walls.
After the Goths and after the Moors, Trujillo enjoyed a transient awakening when Pizarro, son of an Estremenian swine-herd, with Cortez (also born hard by), swept the New World from Mexico to the Andes, and the glory of her sons, with the gold of the Incas, poured into the city. Thereafter destiny altered. Instead of consolidating new-won dominions by fostering commerce, exploiting their resources by establishing forts and factories, plantations, harbours, and the like, Spain directed her energies to missionising. Instead of commercial companies with fleets of merchantmen, she sent out sacred Brotherhoods, friars of religious orders, and studded the New World with empty names, all acts right enough and laudable in their own proper time and place.
Trujillo boasts an industry in the manufacture of a rough red-brown earthenware, chiefly tall water-jars, amphora-shaped, which damsels carry upright on their heads with marvellous balance; and iron-spiked dog-collars as here represented. These are not suitable for lap-dogs, but for the huge mastiffs employed in guarding sheep and which, without such protection, would be devoured by wolves!
Hitherto our journeys have led us chiefly through the Estremenian plain, but after passing Plasencia the country changes. We enter the outliers of those great sierras that shut out Estremadura from León and Castile, from Portugal—and the world! Here one quickly perceives signs of greater prosperity, due in part to the heavier rainfall from the hills, to a slightly richer soil, but mainly to the superior energy of hill-folk. Wherever the soil warrants it, cultivation is pushed right up amidst the jungled slopes of the hills.
In the folds of the sierra grow magnificent woods of Spanish chestnut with some walnut trees, and among these we observed many fresh species of birds, including:—nuthatch (not seen elsewhere in Spain), green woodpecker, common (but no azure) magpies, golden orioles, pied and spotted fly-catchers, grey and white wagtails (breeding), whitethroats and nightingales, longtailed tits, woodlarks, corn-buntings, rock-sparrows, and quite a number of warblers (spectacled, rufous, and subalpine, Bonelli’s and melodious willow-warblers), besides the usual common species—serins, chaffinches, robins, wrens, and so on. On the sterile upland plateaux, both here and in Castile, the black-bellied sand-grouse breeds, as well as stone-curlew, bustard, and the usual larks and chats.