Trujillo

Dawn comes quietly to the Plaza Mayor in Trujillo. A few cars remain parked from the night before, a few people walk through on their way to work or home or somewhere. Shadows fill the plaza, as the sun hasn’t reached above the buildings on the east side of the square. On the west side of the square, the sun strikes the very tops of buildings, just as it has done for over 400 years on these same buildings. The largest, the casa solar built by Hernando Pizarro when he and his Inca bride returned from his bloody conquest of Peru, sees the sun first and turns golden in the bright early morning light.

Quickly, the rays of the sun light up more of the western buildings of the square. As in small towns everywhere in Spain, the awakening daily life of the square marks the awakening daily life of the town. More people walk through the plaza, now going in different directions – some toward the main part of Trujillo; others hurry away from there. The police officer appears and assumes his role as caretaker of the plaza. Cars arrive to find parking places; the police officer directs them, or at least tells them when they’ve parked somewhere they shouldn’t. Restaurants open for the traditional Spanish breakfast of a toasted roll and coffee (orange juice for tourists, a quick shot of colvados for the locals). The Plaza Mayor of Trujillo greets the day.

Spain has world-class cities: Madrid thumps all night long, going to sleep at 5 in the morning; in Barcelona, Catalan culture and architecture thrive; Seville holds tightly and beautifully to its Moorish heritage. But the real world of Spain resides in the small towns and villages that have changed little in the last 500 years. Yes, cars have arrived and, yes, modern buildings and stores and factories surround the ancient centers, but the heart of Spain lives in the Plaza Mayors (main squares) of towns such as Trujillo, where the patterns of life reflect centuries of Spanish life. Visit Madrid and Barcelona and Seville, but come to truly know Spain in Trujillo and Segovia and Arcos de la Frontera and Ubeda.

We got to Trujillo on a lucky break. Eight months earlier I’d tried to make reservations at the parador in Trujillo, but it was full, and I knew of no other reasonably good hotels there. Disappointed, I booked us into Salamanca for 3 days, when I really wanted to spend just two days there and the third in Trujillo. When we arrived in Salamanca, though, the weather had turned sour. Wind and rain, cold weather, and “the most beautiful Plaza Mayor in Spain” almost fully covered by scaffolding made us realize we didn’t want to stay. Paradores always offer good accommodations (though often more expensive than other hotels) so we reviewed our Parador brochure, made a list of paradores within a day’s drive and walked down to the Salamanca Parador. There, I asked for our first choice: “Could you get us a room in the Trujillo Parador for 2 nights?” One phone call and came the reply, “If you’re there by 6 o’clock, they have a room for you.” We raced back to our room at the Hotel Amoeba (not its real name, but close, and the odor in the room made us conclude that there were more than a few amoeba’s around), packed up, checked out, (“Really, sir, the weather will improve in a few days.”) and headed south. The weather did improve a bit as we came to Trujillo, but it made no difference; we would have fallen in love with the town in a blizzard.

No more than five- or six-thousand people live in Trujillo. The town has some modern industry around it, but mostly it looks and feels like a town that has just been itself for a thousand years. And as a true Spanish town, life revolves around the main square – the Plaza Mayor. Salamanca’s Plaza Mayor may be the most beautiful, and Madrid’s the biggest and most historic, but there’s no plaza mayor in Spain that I love more than Trujillo’s. Walking through the rest of the town only made me love Trujillo more. Could I live there? Please?

The Rough Guide describes Trujillo as a “perfect set piece of a Spanish town,” but a set piece it is not. Trujillo lives and breathes. Here’s a short tour of Trujillo; I only hope I can do the town justice.

Start in that wonderful Plaza Mayor. The life of the town seems to revolve around it. People come and go all day; surely every resident of Trujillo must walk through the square at least once and probably twice each day. Two sides and most of a third have restaurants and a couple small stores; the restaurants, of course, have tables outside, but it was a bit too cold to sit outside this trip. The remaining side is formed of homes built by the returning conquistadors – the conqueror of Peru, Fernando Pizarro, and his six half-brothers who accompanied him came from Trujillo. The largest building on the Plaza Mayor, the casa solar (sun house) built by Pizarro's half-brother on the southwest corner, has his coat of arms on the walls, as well as carvings that mark the history of the conquest of Peru.0

A huge statue of Pizarro watches over the Plaza Mayor, but a funny story about the statue takes away some of its pretensions. It seems that the American sculptor originally went to Mexico and asked if the Mexican government would like this beautiful statue he’d cast of Cortez, conqueror of Mexico. Now, as one would imagine, Cortez is not exactly a hero in Mexico, and the government declined the gift. So, the sculptor went to Trujillo and asked the town fathers if they would like to have this beautiful statue he’d cast of Pizarro, conqueror of Peru and a native son of the town. Trujillo was, of course, honored that this American sculptor would honor their town, and accepted. True story or not, it’s an impressive statue.

Now, I have to tell you that if you’ve come to Trujillo for tourist sights, you might think about turning around and heading for somewhere else. There aren’t any here, really. No museums worth a visit, no spectacular vistas, no soaring churches. What you’ll find is a town much as it’s been for 500 years. As you walk up into the old town toward the fortress, you walk in history.

Trujillo’s Plaza Mayor is also the only place to park a car in this part of town, so it’s a beehive of automotive activity. Now, you might think this would spoil the ambiance of the square, but remember, this is a living, breathing, center-of-town Plaza Mayor, and the constant ebb-and-flow of cars only adds to the sense of vitality. Cars slowly crawl into the square, look for a place to park, drive around some more, find a place and park; drivers jump out and run into a restaurant or store, return, jump in and are gone. I have to say that we spent one whole afternoon -- and most of another -- just watching the activity in the square: kids playing, Madrilenos waiting for their tour bus back to Madrid (We never did see a tour of non-Spaniards), cars in and out, people back and forth.

In the Plaza Mayor you will always, except for the earliest mornings and latest nights, see a local police officer or two. The officers add a wonderful touch to the square; you’ll see them in every small town’s Plaza Mayor, and in most plazas in bigger cities. They may provide law enforcement, but they also represent the strict and stern parent (you’ll see both policemen and policewomen), the watchful sibling, the baby-sitter, and the traffic cop to the town. They must know everybody, because it seems that each person walking through the square stops and talks to them for a minute, or at least gives them a wave. They find parking spots for cars, and gently chide those who insist on parking right in the middle of an aisle. Part of the joy of an afternoon in the Plaza Mayor is watching the police officers bring some order to the square, without ever seeming to need the authority of their uniform.

From the Plaza Mayor, take a street that goes uphill to see the rest of the ancient part of Trujillo. It makes no difference which of the three or four streets you choose; they will all wander up toward the Moorish fortress that overlooks the town. As you go upward, you’ll pass more casas solares, churches, houses and a few small restaurants. You’ll also pass the Museo Casa de Pizarro, but continue to pass it. It’s highly unlikely that Pizarro ever did live in this house and the exhibits really reveal nothing of him, his town, or his part in the history of South America.

If you look up, you’ll see one of Trujillo’s trademarks: every tower of any sort has one or two or three stork nests on it. If you’re there in the spring, you’ll see the baby storks – two or three in each nest – clacking their beaks loudly calling for food, and their parents clacking back at them. When a bunch of storks do this at the same time, it makes a unique racket. These nests stretch 3 or 4 feet across, made of solid sticks; that the towers can support so many amazes me. I’ve heard that the storks return to the same nest each year, and the owner of a tower thinks it bad luck when a stork couple does not return; it means something has befallen them.

At the top of the town’s hill, you’ll come upon a fortress in excellent condition. Little is known of its history, but the earliest mentions of it indicate that the Moors built it, possibly on the site of a Roman fortification, likely sometime in the 9^th century as they defended their conquests. The Moorish hegemony over the Iberian Peninsula lasted only a couple hundred years, and by the 12^th century, the Spanish royal army had recaptured the town and the fortress.  The fortress has, since then, been rebuilt and enlarged and modified many times, as each conquering army corrected whatever weakness of the fortifications had allowed that army to overwhelm it.

You can see only one remnant of the fortress’s Moorish origins, but it’s a beauty. As you walk into the fortress (there’s no charge; you can just go in and wander around to your heart’s content), you’ll see a “key-hole” door that frames a tree in the courtyard. This door, whether original or rebuilt by the many succeeding armies that held this fort, clearly is of Moorish design, and was likely part of the original fortress. As you walk through this door, you join those who have passed through it for 1100 years. In the small towns of Spain, it’s hard to escape history, particularly the everyday history of those who lived here 1000, 500, 100 years ago.

Walk back down the hill toward the Plaza Mayor. You’ll see views of the surrounding countryside. Until recently, this area was purely agricultural; now you can see small industrial buildings and warehouses. Progress has come to Trujillo, but has not yet spoiled it. Walk through the Plaza Mayor (wave to the officers; they’ll wave back, even if they’ve never seen you before) and continue down the hill toward the newer part of town. What you’ll find is that there really isn’t a newer part of Trujillo. Yes, there are newer buildings and some offices, but the stores are small and distinct – no Cortes Inglés department store here. A grocery store may have only two aisles, but you’ll find some good local wine, as well as the excellent and ubiquitous vino tinto from Rioja. There are butcher shops and pastry shops and shops for children’s clothes and hardware stores and, as they have for years, they cater to the townspeople, who are more than willing to go to many small shops rather than one big department store.

Hungry? Any of the restaurants in the Plaza Mayor will serve you well (we always seem to return to the Plaza Mayor, don’t we?). Worth noting, though, especially if you’ve been elsewhere in Spain and grown accustomed to having a glass of wine and tapas in the late afternoon: in this part of Spain, the restaurants and bars serve lunch until about 4 o’clock, then there’s very little prepared food available until 9 o’clock or so. For some reason, here the tradition of tapas from lunch onward doesn’t exist, so have a good, late lunch, sit in the plaza and watch the world go by, take a siesta (the rest of the town is), and prepare for the evening.

When darkness falls on the plaza, you’ll see another of its faces. The arcades around the square, and the faces of the buildings, are lighted up, bringing a different beauty to this center of town. The paseo – the evening walk – continues here as it has for centuries and as it does in other small towns of Spain. Families of two or three generations, couples, teenagers, kids and dogs converge on the Plaza Mayor to socialize or just walk around. This is truly one of the loveliest of Spain’s small-town traditions; if you’re there, you’re part of it.

The guidebooks describe the beauty of Trujillo and what a nice place it is to visit for a day, and a night if you really can’t get to anywhere “interesting.” I have a different opinion: Trujillo charmed me because it’s Trujillo and nothing more. Yes, it has a small spot in Spanish history, sending conquistadors to the new world; but more than that, Trujillo presents to us the best of Spain – the small town of people working and playing and living and enjoying life. In Trujillo, you can be part of that life, even if for only a couple days. Go to Trujillo, stay two or three days, and plan to do nothing but wander the town, sit in that beautiful Plaza Mayor, and become a Spaniard.