Walk La Alberca, the first village in Spain declared a Historic-Artistic Site, in 1940

Drive up to the Peña de Francia at 1,723m and its mountaintop sanctuary

Walk the Las Batuecas valley in the Batuecas–Sierra de Francia Natural Park

La Alberca was the first village in Spain to be declared a Historic-Artistic Site, in 1940 — timber-framed houses with overhanging upper storeys leaning towards each other over lanes barely wide enough to walk down, in the Sierra de Francia south of Salamanca. Above it the Peña de Francia rises to 1,723 metres with a Dominican sanctuary on the summit, and below lies Las Batuecas, a closed valley that was a byword in Spanish for somewhere impossibly remote and which still holds prehistoric rock paintings.

Sierra de Francia: La Alberca and the Peña de Francia

Walk the ridge from gate to gate and work out that the house walls are the town wall

Find the bullring, which is a street with the ends closed off

Climb to the castle at the end of the ridge

Walk into the chestnut woods of the Sierra de Francia around the village

Work out what it takes to keep a village like this alive, and what the population is now

Miranda del Castañar runs along a narrow ridge in the Sierra de Francia with a castle at one end, four gates, and a wall that the houses are built into — so the outer wall of the village is the back wall of the houses. It has a bullring formed simply by closing off the street beside the castle, which is what villages did before anyone built one. The Sierra de Francia around it is chestnut and oak, and it was one of the last strongholds of Castilian in a region that has been emptying for a century.

Miranda del Castañar: A Village Inside Its Own Walls

Drive the slate valleys and look at the terracing — every scrap of flat ground here was made by hand

Find out what the black legend was and what it was used to argue in the 16th and 17th centuries

Watch Buñuel's Las Hurdes, tierra sin pan of 1932 before you come, then work out what he staged and what he did not

Find the hurdano houses in the alquerías — built entirely of slate and roofed with slate slabs

Find the rock carvings cut into flat slate and schist outcrops at ground level, and walk up towards Rongiero at 1,622 metres — this is a beautiful place, which is the part the legend left out

Las Hurdes is a knot of steep slate valleys in northern Cáceres that has carried a black legend for four centuries. In the 16th and 17th centuries, while Europe argued about whether the peoples of America were fully human, writers used isolated corners of Iberia — this one above all — as proof that savagery existed in Europe too. Alfonso XIII came in 1922 after medical reports by Gregorio Marañón and others. Then in 1932 Luis Buñuel filmed Las Hurdes, tierra sin pan here, and fixed the region in the Spanish mind as the definition of rural backwardness. It is a beautiful place, and worth coming to on its own terms.

Las Hurdes: The Black Legend and Buñuel's Camera

Walk round the walls of the empty village

Go up to the castle at the north-west corner, built on the Almohad alcazaba

Walk the empty main street and work out when the last people left

Look out over the reservoir that was supposed to flood the village and never did

Granadilla was founded by the Muslims in the 9th century on a slate hill above the Alagón, a stronghold on the road between the Vía de la Plata and the Hurdes. Ferdinand II of León took it in 1160, walled it and made it a town in 1170; it was called Granada until the fall of the other Granada in 1492, then Granadilla to avoid the confusion. When the Gabriel y Galán reservoir was built it was declared liable to flooding, expropriated in 1960 and emptied of its people — and the water has never reached it, not even with the reservoir full. It was declared a historic site in 1980, and since 1984 it has been in the national programme for bringing abandoned villages back to use.

Granadilla: A Walled Village Emptied for a Flood That Never Came

Walk the judería down to the river and look at how the chestnut frames are built

Work out why the houses lean towards each other over the lane

Walk into the chestnut forest above the town, which is where the building timber came from

Come in late October or November for the Otoño Mágico, when the chestnut valley turns

Find the Convento de los Trinitarios and the old bridge over the Ambroz

A substantial Jewish community established itself beside the Ambroz in the 15th century, and Hervás has one of the best-preserved Jewish quarters in Spain — steep, narrow lanes of houses framed in chestnut timber with adobe infill, leaning into each other over the street, dropping down to the river. The valley behind is chestnut forest, which is where the timber came from and which turns colour spectacularly in autumn. The town is the main settlement of the Ambroz valley in the northern edge of Cáceres province, under the Sierra de Béjar.

Hervás: A Jewish Quarter of Chestnut Beams

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

Come in the second half of March for the Cerezo en Flor and get up onto a terrace above the valley floor

Work out the number: about a million and a half trees flowering almost in unison across a fortnight

Find out what a picota is and why it comes off its stalk on the tree

Walk up into the Garganta de los Infiernos reserve to the Los Pilones rock pools

Come back in June for the fruit, which is the other half of the year here

The Jerte valley runs between the Sierra de Gredos and the Sierra de Tormantos, terraced from the river to well up the slopes with about a million and a half cherry trees. In the second half of March they flower almost in unison and the valley turns white for about a fortnight — the Cerezo en Flor, a festival of National Tourist Interest and one of the few genuinely mass floral events in Europe. The cherries themselves have a protected designation; the picota varieties come off the stalk on the tree, which is what distinguishes them. Above the valley the Garganta de los Infiernos is a reserve of rock pools cut by the stream.

The Jerte Valley: A Million Cherry Trees at Once

Walk through the Roman arch, the only one in Spain with three openings

Stand in the Plaza Mayor under the balconies of the Ducal Palace

Walk the lanes narrow enough to touch both walls with your arms out

Walk out to the old castle, the alcazaba where Almanzor is said to have died, now the town cemetery

Medinaceli sits on a hill at about 1,200 metres above the Jalón valley, and at its edge stands a Roman arch built between the 1st and 3rd centuries AD — the only Roman arch in Spain with three openings. The Romans also started working the salt pans in the valley, which went on until 1994. The town was a frontier between Christians and Muslims for centuries; some authors say Almanzor came to die in its alcazaba in 1002. The alcazaba later became the counts' castle and is now the cemetery; the counts moved to the Ducal Palace, whose balconies look onto the Plaza Mayor. Some of the lanes are so narrow you can touch both sides at once.

Medinaceli: Spain's Only Three-Arched Roman Gate

Order Torta del Casar, the Extremaduran sheep's milk cheese made with cardoon rennet, protected since 1999 and matured for at least 60 days; slice the top off and scoop out the creamy centre

Try Iberian ham, one of Extremadura's best-known products, in Cáceres' old town

Walk the UNESCO-listed old town, on the list since 1986, through the 18th-century Arco de la Estrella and past the 12th-century Torre de Bujaco

Visit Casar de Cáceres, the town that gives the cheese its name

Torta del Casar is made with cardoon rennet rather than animal rennet, which breaks the curd down differently and leaves the inside of the cheese almost liquid — so it is served by cutting the top off the disc like a lid and scooping the middle out with bread. It has been protected since 1999 and must mature at least sixty days. Around it Extremadura produces the other thing it is known for: acorn-fed Iberian ham from pigs run in the dehesa oak pasture, which is the best ham in the world and priced accordingly.