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

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

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

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

Go into the Mudéjar cloister — the sanctuary was rebuilt in Toledan Mudéjar, which is not what anyone expects of a royal Castilian monastery

Go into the sacristy, built 1636–45, which is reckoned one of the most dazzling Baroque sacristies in Spain

Work out the sequence of styles piled on one building between the 14th and 18th centuries

Find out how it started — a shepherd, a hidden image, and a king who won a battle in 1340 and paid up

Drive or walk into the Villuercas around it and see how remote a place this actually is

Alfonso XI credited his victory at the Salado in 1340 to a Virgin found years earlier by a shepherd near the river Guadalupe, and built a church where the hermitage stood. What grew out of it over the next four centuries is a monastery containing Gothic, Mudéjar, Renaissance, Baroque and neoclassical work layered on top of one another, in a village in the middle of the Villuercas mountains. It was made a basilica by Pius XII in 1955 and a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1993, and the Virgin is patron of Extremadura.

Guadalupe: The Monastery in the Mountains

Climb to the keep on the rock and work out why the Poema de Mio Cid calls it very strong

Count the surviving parish churches and work out what size of town needed seven

Find out what the muleteers of Atienza did in 1162 with a child king

Come at Pentecost for La Caballada, which is the ride that commemorates it

Walk the medieval streets and the remains of the walls below the rock

Atienza sits under a rock crowned by a castle keep in the far north of Guadalajara, and the Poema de Mio Cid calls it a very strong rock. It had seven parish churches at its height for a town that now has a few hundred people, and several of them are still standing. Every Pentecost the town holds La Caballada, a ride commemorating the muleteers of Atienza who in 1162 smuggled the child king Alfonso VIII out of the town under the noses of his uncle's men, disguised in their own procession.