Zafra, Merida y Trujillo

I have now left Andalusia behind and am in the land of the Conquistadors.

Cordoba to Merida is a long drive, so I stopped at a town called Zara, not knowing anything about it, I was charmed by the lovely main square and I even found a potter who told me how there used to be a whole bunch of potteries, but he was the last. I bought the bowl on the left, oops.

Walking passed a half opened door, I looked in and saw this entrance hall. The Arab influence is still very evident in these parts. They say that the province of Extremadura is like this up until Merida and then it changes quite abruptly. I will let you know.

The potter also showed me these drinking vessels and said young people no longer used them and that really people only bought them for sentimental reasons or because the tourists thought they where quaint. I like the pattern on them, made simply by rubbing a stone over the damp surface of the clay.

In Merida I walked by the market, still busy at 12 noon. It was incredibly hot and I made a mad visit to the Roman theatre, but had it to myself.

After a lunch of chickpea soup followed by grilled fish and salad, finished with a small flan and a coffee I had to take a nap like everyone else.

Merida is famous for its Roman ruins and is very modern museum, built by a famous Spanish architect called 'Maneo'. The building is fantastic and the collection has some pretty amazing things in it too, unfortunately the website is not very helpful.

In 1998 the province of Extemadura began awarding one person the title of 'Master craftsman' every two year. Luckily for me the six men named Masters since then where exhibiting their work for the first time at a show in Merida. I arranged to interview one of them, Lorenzo Vinagre at his work-shop on the outskirt of the town.

He and his brother have a shop in town. Lorenzo is the 'craftsman' and his brother Juanma is the 'businessman'. Like so many craftsmen in Spain he learned his craft at home. He can produce all the traditional, functional items people used to use, but also has his own contemporary take on them and is now working on commission with architects, doing murals in hotels and bars. To supplement his income he makes reproductions of roman clay objects that are sold at the museum, with the help of mentally disabled men he knows from working at the local asylum.

Again, I was told that traditional objects did not sell, where not used... so it was rather satisfying to see a drinking vessel (called a "botín" in Spanish) being used quite a lot at the local breakfast haunt in Trujillo. The thick clay keeps the water cool and the object is far more attractive than any plastic bottle.

I was there stuffing my face with churros again. Trujillo is magical, there is something slightly oppressive about it, with all the stone and churches built with the money the conquistadors brought back from the new world. This is the birthplace of Pissarro, the most famous of the Spanish adventurers and also one of the most ruthless.

You can imagine why, this is a small village built on a rock etched in a harsh, dry landscape. Tough people, with the options of going either into farming or the church.

I found the last whicker worker in Trujillo, four generations and he would be the last. I loved watching him work and admired the work of his father. He was very happy to explain how the tools work and how the whicker is soaked and toasted and how it is split. He can't compete with plastic objects and the Chinese market, but showed me how their products are of an inferior quality to his. He was currently mending some chairs he had made 20 years earlier for a bar.

The bull head was a replica commissioned by a well known family in these parts, who had known Picasso, there is a famous picture of the painter holding a whicker bull head over his head, and they wanted a copy.

Before leaving I had a wander around and saw this tempting window display. A lot of the typical sweets here are made by local nuns, you can go directly to the four or five convents in Trujillo and buy it from them. You wont see the women, you simply ring a bell, state what you want, put the money in the rotating window and then wait for the packages to appear. The nuns have all taken a vow of silence and seclusion.

Time to head for Caceres.