Walk round the castle of the Sad Countess, built from 1400 in the lowest part of the town

Find the Palacio de la Mosquera, the neoclassical house of the exiled Infante Luis de Borbón

Go underground in the Cuevas del Águila at Ramacastañas

Find the town's coat of arms, which shows the castle in flames

Arenas de San Pedro sits on the south side of the Gredos, above the Tiétar valley, and its castle is unusual for standing low in the town rather than on a height: the Constable Ruy López Dávalos ordered it built in 1400. In 1430 it went as a dowry to Juana Pimentel when she married Álvaro de Luna, the royal favourite who was beheaded in Valladolid on 2 June 1453, and it is known as the castle of the Sad Countess. At the other end of town the Palacio de la Mosquera is a neoclassical house built by the Infante Luis de Borbón, son of Philip V, after he was sent away from court for marrying beneath him. Nine kilometres south, at Ramacastañas, are the Cuevas del Águila.

Arenas de San Pedro: The Sad Countess's Castle and the Eagle Caves

Walk in to the Circo de Gredos and the Laguna Grande in the floor of it

Work out the vegetation bands as you climb: holm oak, then Pyrenean oak, then broom, then bare grass

Get close to the western ibex, which will not move for you, and work out why the largest population of the subspecies is on this one range

Climb towards the Almanzor at 2,592 metres if the weather and your legs allow

Come back at dusk and listen to the rut in autumn, which carries a long way in a cirque

Gredos runs across Ávila, Cáceres, Madrid and Salamanca, topping out at the Almanzor at 2,592 metres, with the Circo de Gredos — a glacial cirque with a lagoon in the floor of it — in the central sector. The vegetation stacks in clear bands: holm oak to about 550 metres, Pyrenean oak from there to 1,800, broom scrub to 2,300 and bare summit grassland above that. The western ibex, Capra pyrenaica victoriae, has its largest population here across Ávila and Cáceres, and the animals on the high ground are entirely unbothered by walkers.

Gredos: Ibex Above the Tree Line

Stay in or walk round the castle, one of the first paradores in Spain, opened in 1930

Work out what the parador network was set up to do and whether it worked

Look south from the walls to the Sierra de Gredos across the Campo Arañuelo

Find the Mudéjar tower in the town below the castle

Oropesa's castle was the seat of the counts of Oropesa, and in 1930 it became one of the first paradores in Spain — the network of state hotels in historic buildings that was set up precisely to keep buildings like this standing by giving them something to do. It looks south over the Campo Arañuelo to the Sierra de Gredos, which is one of the better views from a hotel window anywhere. The town below has a Mudéjar tower and the parish church, and the ceramics tradition here runs into Talavera next door.

Oropesa: A Castle You Can Sleep In

Go into the basilica of the Virgen del Prado and work out how many centuries of tile are on the walls

Watch a workshop throw and paint, and work out how much of the design vocabulary is Islamic in origin

Find out who Jan Floris was and what Italian technique he brought here around 1558

Find out what UNESCO inscribed in 2019 and which Mexican towns share the listing

Go on to El Puente del Arzobispo, which is part of the same inscription

Talavera has made glazed earthenware for five centuries, and the design, forms, glazes and decoration are Islamic in origin — plant and animal motifs that shifted to human figures under the Christian kingdoms. It took on industrial weight from the 16th century, and in about 1558 the Flemish master Jan Floris brought Italian technique into the workshops. Its commercial monopoly fought Seville for centuries and then lost ground to Alcora in the late 18th; the French army destroyed the kilns and factories between 1810 and 1812. UNESCO inscribed it in 2019 together with Puebla and Tlaxcala in Mexico, as one tradition across two continents. The basilica of the Virgen del Prado in the town is covered in the tiles, inside and out.

Talavera de la Reina: Blue and Yellow Ceramics

Go into the imperial apartments and find the window through which Charles V heard Mass from his bed

Find the chair built for a man who could no longer walk and had to be carried

Work out what he gave up: Spain, the Netherlands, Naples, the Empire — abdicated, then this

Walk the gardens and the pool he had made below the terrace

Drive the Vera valley around it and work out why, of everywhere he owned, he chose here

Charles V ruled Spain, the Netherlands, much of Italy and the Holy Roman Empire, abdicated the lot, and came to a Hieronymite monastery in a wooded valley in northern Extremadura to wait for the end. He lived here from 1556 until he died on 21 September 1558. He was crippled with gout, so his rooms were built beside the church choir with a window through which he could hear Mass from his bed, and a chair was made specially so he could be carried. Yuste was named a European Heritage site in 2007.

Yuste: Where the Emperor Went to Die

Walk the streets and work out that the water channels are drainage, not decoration

Find a batipuerta and work out what a half-height door is keeping out

Find out what chacinas are and why a mountain village at this altitude made them

Work out where the water comes from and how it is fed into every street

Walk up into the Sierra de Béjar above the village, which is where the water starts

Candelario is a mountain village under the Sierra de Béjar with channels of running water — regaderas — cut down the middle of every street, fed from the sierra above, and they are not decorative: the village made chacinas, cured pork products, and the water carried the waste away and kept the streets clean. Each house has a batipuerta, a half-height outer door that keeps the water and the animals out while letting light and air in. The whole thing is a working piece of village engineering and it is protected as a historic ensemble.

Candelario: Built Around Moving Water

Go into a secadero and see how it is done — slow oak smoke, upstairs, for days

Taste all three grades side by side: dulce, agridulce and picante

Go to the pimentón museum at Jaraíz de la Vera, which is also where the regulating council sits

Work out why the smoke is not a flourish: slow smoke-drying is what makes the colour and aroma keep

Buy a tin from a mill in the valley and compare it at home with supermarket paprika

Hungarian paprika is air-dried. Pimentón de la Vera is dried over slow oak smoke in two-storey drying houses, which is why it tastes of smoke and why the flavour, aroma and colour hold for so long — the dehydration is slow and gentle. It has been a protected designation of origin in the EU since 22 August 2007, grown and processed in La Vera, Campo Arañuelo, the Ambroz valley and the Alagón and Árrago valleys in northern Cáceres, and the regulating council sits at Jaraíz de la Vera. It comes sweet, bittersweet and hot.

Pimentón de la Vera: Smoke, Not Sunshine

Visit the Prado, opened in 1819, and find Velázquez's Las Meninas of 1656

See Picasso's Guernica of 1937 in the Reina Sofía

Tour the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in the Villahermosa Palace, opened in 1992

Three world-class collections stand within about a kilometre of each other on the Paseo del Prado. The Prado opened in 1819 and holds the Spanish royal collection — Velázquez, Goya, Bosch, Titian — with Las Meninas of 1656 at the centre of it, a painting that has been argued about for three hundred and seventy years and still is. The Reina Sofía has Guernica, painted in 1937 for the Spanish pavilion in Paris and kept out of Spain until Franco was dead. The Thyssen fills the gaps both of them have, which is most of the rest of European painting.

Madrid's Paseo del Prado: The Prado, Guernica and the Thyssen

Climb up to the castle on its crag above the town

Find Juan Pacheco's coat of arms on the vault keystones and on the four faces of the keep

Walk the barbican and the round towers he added between 1449 and 1454

Visit the interpretation centre at the foot of the castle on the battle of 25 April 1707

Almansa's castle stands on a crag above the town. Its oldest walls, of rammed earth, were long taken for Almohad work, but tests during the 2008 restoration dated them to the first decades of Christian rule, around 1300; Don Juan Manuel rebuilt it in the 14th century, and Juan Pacheco, second Marquis of Villena, gave it its present shape between 1449 and 1454, with the keep, the round towers and the barbican, his arms carved on the vault keystones and on all four faces of the keep. On 25 April 1707, on the plain below, the Duke of Berwick's army for Philip V beat the forces of Archduke Charles in one of the great battles of the War of the Spanish Succession.