In the new newspaper that I have started writing – to my years! -, there is an entry on Saturday of Gloria, April 19, 2025, and the next day, on Sunday of Resurrection. On Holy Week, with its rest and vacation variants, in the midst of pertinal rains.
For me, the most important thing about Holy Week this year, fell on Thursday and Friday, when I left Madrid to one of my favorite destinations: northern Extremadura. All green in spring, with incredible landscapes of empty Spain, touring dozens of kilometers in a row without seeing a house, or a neighbor, or a car. The beauty of a field that seems uninhabited and that is also true, expects a little more dynamism.
After passing Talavera de la Reina, we arrive at Puente del Arzobispo, on the Tagus, to then enter a stretch covered with oak, holm oaks and cork, all the Quercus. And in addition, Castañares, Madroños, and Choperas in the streams, with the olive groves always in the background and the high grass and prieta as it is only seen in the years of large rains.
We pass through the villages of Navalmorallejo, La Estrella, Mohedas de la Jara, and after crossing the Guadarranque, we arrived in Extremadura. And a few kilometers, we were in Guadalupe.
There, the Great Monastery, Basilica of the Order of San Francisco, governed by a prior. Religious monument, of the Middle Ages, which was subsequently improved, and fought from the plundering of Mendizábal’s confiscation when declaring the parish of the small city. In times he visited the virgin Morena several times Hernán Cortés, and before, frequently, Fernando the Catholic, who died in 1616 very close, in Madrigalejo, on the way to the monastery.
We will continue and end, next week, this Extremaduran trip.