Introducing Extremadura

The people of Extremadura like to remark on how neatly their home region’s name fits its characteristics. This is an extreme place, they say, with a knowing smile – extreme and hard: extrema y dura. They’re talking about the climate out here on the border of Portugal, in Spain’s wild west. With its long, dry, searingly hot summers and cold winters, this is the ur-Spain, where olive groves and hunched clusters of whitewashed houses provide the visual relief in the dusty, sun-blasted, terracotta-coloured terrain.

There’s a certain pride too, in knowing what it takes to survive and thrive here. Some locals will tell you the conditions breed a specific kind of toughness and self-reliance, which helps explain, they say, why so