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Updated: July 11, 2025
The reader will look in vain on the map of modern Spain for the ancient province of Estremadura, yet it is a spot which, in that it was the birthplace of the conquerors of Peru and Mexico to say nothing of the discoverer of the Mississippi contributed more to the glory of Spain than any other province in the Iberian peninsula.
Although Dom Sancho's kingdom only extended from the Minho to the Tagus, in the early years of the thirteenth century the rich provinces of Beira, and still more of Estremadura, were very thinly peopled: the inhabitants lived only in walled towns, and their one occupation was fighting, and plunder almost their only way of gaining a living.
Education is now placed within reach of all, and even long-forgotten Estremadura is brought to share in the impulse towards national life and commercial progress.
"Brother," said the curate, "those two books are made up of lies, and are full of folly and nonsense; but this of the Great Captain is a true history, and contains the deeds of Gonzalo Hernandez of Cordova, who by his many and great achievements earned the title all over the world of the Great Captain, a famous and illustrious name, and deserved by him alone; and this Diego Garcia de Paredes was a distinguished knight of the city of Trujillo in Estremadura, a most gallant soldier, and of such bodily strength that with one finger he stopped a mill-wheel in full motion; and posted with a two-handed sword at the foot of a bridge he kept the whole of an immense army from passing over it, and achieved such other exploits that if, instead of his relating them himself with the modesty of a knight and of one writing his own history, some free and unbiassed writer had recorded them, they would have thrown into the shade all the deeds of the Hectors, Achilleses, and Rolands."
Of course, the pass will be equally useful going down to fetch it for, without it, my mules would be certain to be impressed for service, by the French. "So you see, nothing could have happened more fortunately for, anywhere between the Tagus and Badajoz, we can turn off from Estremadura into Portugal.
There is something impressive about the grim solitudes of Estremadura; and if the plains of Leon and Old Castile are bald and dreary, they are studded with old cities renowned in history and rich in relics of the past.
Had the poor woman been only thirty and one instead of thirty and two summers the difference according to her mode of reckoning was great she would have restored to Destiny the award it offered her to wait for another more suited to her taste, but since man proposes and necessity disposes, she saw herself obliged in her great need for a husband to content herself with a poor fellow who had been cast out from Estremadura and who, after wandering about the world for six or seven years like a modern Ulysses, had at last found on the island of Luzon hospitality and a withered Calypso for his better half.
Lusitania had a Viriatus, Rome a Caesar, Carthage a Hannibal, Greece an Alexander, Castile a Count Fernan Gonzalez, Valencia a Cid, Andalusia a Gonzalo Fernandez, Estremadura a Diego Garcia de Paredes, Jerez a Garci Perez de Vargas, Toledo a Garcilaso, Seville a Don Manuel de Leon, to read of whose valiant deeds will entertain and instruct the loftiest minds and fill them with delight and wonder.
I am not one of those who distribute bread at the gate of his palace, nor who seek popularity through almsgiving. I have pasture lands in Estremadura, many vineyards in La Mancha, houses, and above all State stock much stock. As a good Spaniard I have wished to help the Government with my money, more especially as it bears interest.
"Sir Knight," replied the trader, "I entreat your worship in the name of this present company of princes, that, to save us from charging our consciences with the confession of a thing we have never seen or heard of, and one moreover so much to the prejudice of the Empresses and Queens of the Alcarria and Estremadura, your worship will be pleased to show us some portrait of this lady, though it be no bigger than a grain of wheat; for by the thread one gets at the ball, and in this way we shall be satisfied and easy, and you will be content and pleased; nay, I believe we are already so far agreed with you that even though her portrait should show her blind of one eye, and distilling vermilion and sulphur from the other, we would nevertheless, to gratify your worship, say all in her favour that you desire."
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