Still Discovering Spain...

Since May 20, 1194, when Alfonso II of Aragon donated an old Moorish castle to a handful of monks in order to found the Monasterio de Piedra, this spot in Spain’s mostly barren reaches has been home to a divine paradise here on Earth.

Though officially secularized in 1835, during the reign of Isabella II, visitors to the monastery today will still find the remaining Gothic and Baroque buildings as heavily fortified as they were in the days of the monastery’s founding. Its cloisters remain intact, surrounded by immaculately landscaped gardens, though the main church was irreparably damaged in the aforementioned secularization and subsequent period of abandonment.

These ruins have an eerie, beautiful air about them, as they remain half-triumphant in their unwillingness to fall after so many years. Heavily fortified since its conception, visitors to the monastery will find the compound’s original cloisters intact, albeit reincarnated as a hotel and guesthouse.

Just slightly farther afield from civilization, ancient and contemporary, is the Piedra River, which is responsible for the conjoining nature park’s legendary, remarkable waterfalls. Created through the dissolution of limestone in a phenomenon geologists refer to as “karstification,” these standout cataracts include the 50-meter-tall Cola del Caballo (named such for its resemblance to a horse’s tail), and a handful of others which seem to bell into a million tiny rivulets running over the shoulder of huge boulders.

Clearly marked trails wend visitors on a five-kilometer path through the park’s most famed sights, including a natural reflecting pool trapped in a canyon called Mirror Lake. The natural park also has several caves, into which shepherds have built shelters for their flocks, as well as a raptor centre that’s open to the public.

As of February 16, 1983, Monasterio de Piedra — natural park and all — was declared a national monument, which should ensure the protection of this little slice of the divine for another 800 years to come. 

The award of Capital of Rural Tourism was an initiative driven by the online platform Escapadarural.com, now five years in and with 247 villages entering this year it has established itself as a benchmark award for those looking to enjoy rural Spain. This years winner, Olvera in the region of Cadiz is an unmistakable picture postcard of whitewashed houses and steep streets. Lying in the Sierra Norte of Cádiz, it is one of the most important towns at the crossroads where the provinces of Cádiz, Málaga and Seville meet.

The town has managed to prevail over the rest of the finalists by obtaining 21,794 votes (18%) out of a total of 120,781 participants, a figure that far exceeds that registered in previous editions and which shows how the contest has become more established each year and has been well received by rural travellers.

Of 247 participants, the digital platform specialized in rural accommodation selected the ten finalists under certain minimum requirements: having less than 10,000 inhabitants, its efforts to promote quality rural tourism and not having competed in previous editions.

Second place went to Daroca, in Zaragoza, with 18,748 votes, very close to snatching the title. They are followed by Yeste (Albacete) in third place, Taramundi (Asturias) was fourth, Cuacos de Yuste (Cáceres) and Aia (Guipúzcoa) took fifth and sixth place. Chelva (Valencia) was seventh while Sepúlveda (Segovia), Ortigueira (A Coruña) and La Baronia de Rialb (Lleida) rounded up the top ten this year

The mayor of Olvera, Francisco Párrago Rodríguez, was over the moon with the award and the opportunity it represents: "As Mayor, I want to show the satisfaction we feel for this distinction. First of all, to thank the support received by so many anonymous people who have voted for our candidacy, as well as all the institutions that have supported us and, of course, EscapadaRural.com for letting us appear in their valuable award programme and being able to show visitors everything that the town of Olvera can offer ".

The Capital of Rural Tourism awards were born with the double objective of giving visibility to the municipalities that are committed to rural tourism by creating a network of contacts to share experiences and concerns and turn the winner into a reference for rural tourism.

In last year's edition, Potes, in Cantabria, won the award with 24,499 votes. Another Cantabrian town, Santillana del Mar, was the winner of the contest in the 2019 edition with 9,720 votes. In 2018 the winner was Aínsa-Sobrarbe, in Huesca, and in the first edition of the award went to Sigüenza (Guadalajara).

No country has such a variety of food museums as Spain. Wine, cheese, honey, chocolate, olive oil, saffron: you name it, there’s a museum for it. Many exhibitions explore the origins and variations of the long-eaten foods that have made Spain a culinary destination. One museum in Extremadura, however, is dedicated to one cheese, and one cheese only.

The "Museo del Queso" in the village of Casar de Cáceres celebrates the centuries-old regional specialty Torta del Casar. Long-ago shepherds, nudging herds of sheep down roads used since Roman times, realised that the cardo, a purple-flowered thistle lining the paths, could coagulate their sheep’s milk into cheese. The thistle, known as cardoon in English, is a relative of the artichoke and gives the slowly-aged cheese its subtle bitter flavour. With an unusually soft, semiliquid centre, the pressed cylinder of cheese sags in the middle. 

The simple museum, housed in a typical local abode, showcases the production of the cheese as well as the lifestyles of the mere eight families who today produce "Torta del Casar". So sacred is the cheese-making process that in 1999, the Extremadura government created the Denominación de Origen del Casar, a regulatory body charged solely with certifying regional Torta and policing imitation cheeses. This body also ensures that the cheese is only made from the milk of Merino and Entrefina sheep⁠ - notoriously ungenerous milk producers. It takes 20 of these sheep to yield 2.2 pounds of cheese. It’s perhaps no surprise that the museum withholds free samples. That said, it is readily available in gourmet delicatessens.