Trujillo was the preferred location of one of the few expatriate property agents in Extremadura. He came from Austria, and flew around the hills of the Sierra de Montanchez on a quad bike wearing a woolen beanie, taking little notice of the traffic in the town or the oak trees in the dehesa.

He would charmingly say with a glint in his eye… Trujillo is the place I’d live if I had the choice, and although he took clients to adosados, casas, and palacios in Trujillo, more often than not they would go to the villages of the surrounding sierra, such as Arroyomolinos, Almoharin, Valdemorales, Ibahernando, and Robledillo de Trujillo, where together we viewed a house.

He hoped his clients would share his partiality and buy somewhere in Trujillo, not least because the prices were at least three times as much and his commission that much more. But regardless of the financial incentive his taste couldn’t be faulted, it’s one of Spain’s most enchanting places.

Robledillo has a population of five hundred and a grotesque fountain. Vittoria herself, said as much as I stood in front of it in the Plaza España. She assumed that people are only interested in beautiful things and directed me, more than invited me, to see the more sophisticated parts of the pueblo. Contemplating something unattractive wasn’t Vittoria nature such was her steadfast belief in the accepted conventions of beauty.

Despite the fountain, the house I viewed was solid with an unusually wide, arched entrance, the church had an imposing simplicity, parts of the village had been sympathetically restored, and… there were two more aspects that attracted me.

Robledillo has a population of five hundred and a grotesque fountain.Vittoria herself, said as much...

Firstly, it had Trujillo in its name, and with self-inflicted disingenuity I could imagine living in Trujillo. Secondly, I drunk the best beer ever pulled, in a bar behind the Plaza España. It may have been the particular moment, it was around three in the afternoon, it was about forty degrees, and I’d been walking around the village for nearly two hours.

Within half-an-hour of arriving, everyone in the village was aware I was looking for a house. And reaching the bar I could easily have agreed to buy half the village – everyone wanted to sell me a house.

Families have a collection, acquired by marriages and deaths. Surplus to their needs they’re usually home to either mules, donkeys, pigs, dogs, cats, chickens, cars, motorcyles in various states of repair, or assorted bric-a-brac long since forgotten, but in times of crisis the houses can be sold to raise cash. To a fellow Spaniard they have little value, but to a foreigner, especially an Englishman, more so a Londoner, who is used to overpaying for property, they are a gold mine.

It was the same when I returned many years later, straightforward reasoning had no effect. Explaining that another wasn’t necessary or required, having bought one some years ago, didn’t deter them from attempting to sell me a house, and often not their own, either on behalf of a distant relative, neighbour or friend – either alive, or dead.
This was less bothering than my inability to find once more the bar behind the Plaza España. Circling the village, maybe five times, I was certain I would find it.