Granadilla
At the extreme northern verge of the plain one encounters a singular survival of long-past and forgotten ages, the “fenced city” of Granadilla, so absolutely unspoilt and unchanged by time that one breathes for a spell a pure mediæval air. Granadilla is mentioned in no book that we possess; but it stands there, nevertheless, perched on a rocky bluff above the rushing Alagón, and entirely encompassed by a thirty-foot wall. Not a single house, not a hut, shows up outside that rampart, and its single gate is guarded by a massive stone-built tower.
This tower, we were told by a local friend, was erected after the “Reconquest” (which here occurred about 1300), but the bridge which spans the Alagón, immediately below, is attributed to the Romans—more than a thousand years earlier! and the town itself to the Moors—a pretty tangle which some wandering archaeologist may some day unravel.[38] That the Moors established a settlement here, or hard by, we are confident owing to the existence of extensive huertas (plantations) a few miles up the banks of Alagón. This is just one of those enclaves of rich soil for which the Arabs always had a keen eye; and ancient boundary-walls, with evidence of extreme care in irrigation and cultivation, all bespeak Moorish handiwork. These huertas are planted with fig, pomegranate, cherry, and various exotic fruit-trees, besides cork-oak and olive; every tree displaying signs of extreme old age—though that strikes one in most parts of Spain. Never have we seen more luxuriant crops of every sort than in those ancient huertas. Yet they are inset amid encircling wastes!
Granadilla (its name surely suggests cherished memories in its founders of the famous Andalucian vega) lies at the gate of that strange wild mountain-region called Las Hurdes.
CHAPTER XXIII
LAS HURDES (ESTREMADURA) AND THE SAVAGE TRIBES THAT INHABIT THEM
ISOLATED amidst the congeries of mountain-ranges that converge upon León, Castile, and Estremadura, lies a lost region that bears this name. The Hurdes occupy no small space; they represent no insignificant nook, but a fair-sized province—say fifty miles long by thirty broad—severed from the outer world; cut off from Portugal on the one side, from Spain on the other; while its miserable inhabitants are ignored and despised by both its neighbours.
Who and what are these wild tribes (numbering 4000 souls) that, in a squalor and savagery incredible in modern Europe, cling, in solitary tenacity, to these inhospitable fastnesses?
Possibly they are the remnants of Gothish fugitives who, 1200 years ago, sought shelter in these hills from Arab scimitars; other theories trace their origin back to an earlier era. But whether Goths or Visigoths, Vandals or other, these pale-faced Hurdanos are surely none of swarthy Arab or Saracenic blood; and equally certainly they are none of Spanish race. The Spanish leave them severely alone—none dwell in Las Hurdes. Being neither ethnologists nor antiquaries, nor even sensational writers, the authors confine themselves to their personal experience, stiffened by a study of what the few Spanish authorities have collated on the subject.