Trujillo

Trujillo is identified with Roman Turgalium, a dependency of Augusta Emerita, present-day Mérida. After the Islamic conquest it became one of the main towns of the region, known in Arabic as Targhālah, and its castle on the hilltop was built mostly in the 9th and 10th centuries. In the early 12th century the Almoravids launched raids from here against Talavera, and under the Almohads it changed hands repeatedly between Muslims, Portuguese, Castilians and Leonese; from 1188 to 1195 it was the headquarters of a military order named after the town.

Christian forces finally took Trujillo on 25 January 1232. Local legend says the attackers were faltering until they saw the Virgin Mary between the towers of the Arco del Triunfo, and she became the town's patron as the Virgen de la Victoria. Trujillo remained a royal town rather than a lordship; Alfonso X granted it a charter in 1256, John II made it a city in 1430, and a weekly market followed in 1465. It had a prosperous Mudéjar community of up to 400 people and a Jewish community with its own synagogue, until the expulsion of 1492.

The 16th century was its great age. Trujillo sided with the emperor in the Comuneros revolt, and fortunes from the Americas paid for palaces that spread the town beyond its walls. Francisco Pizarro, the conqueror of Peru, was born here, as was Francisco de Orellana, the explorer of the Amazon. From 1528 it headed a province of its own. Decline followed: Moriscos were expelled in 1610–11, French occupation drained the town in 1811, and in 1834 it became the seat of a judicial district.

Trujillo's identity is bound up with its square and its past. The Plaza Mayor has been the centre of town life since palaces and noble houses replaced the craftsmen's quarter there in the 16th century, and it is where the town gathers for every celebration. The whole urban ensemble has been protected as a heritage site since 1962, and the town rejoined the association of the Most Beautiful Villages of Spain in 2024.

Its calendar has two fiestas of regional tourist interest. Holy Week is followed on Easter Sunday by the Chíviri, when the square fills with people in local costume singing and dancing to the beat of the Chíviri, and the next day the whole town goes picnicking in the country. In late August or early September the Virgen de la Victoria comes down from her chapel in the castle to San Martín for the patron's fiestas, with capeas and a festival in the castle. The National Cheese Fair, held around the start of May, is the most important cheese competition in Spain.

The town has become a film location: the castle stood in for Casterly Rock in Game of Thrones and appeared in the second season of House of the Dragon. Storks nest on its old buildings, and lesser kestrels breed in the bullring and other buildings in town.

About 8,600 people lived in the municipality in 2025, making it the sixth most populous in the province of Cáceres. Most live in the town itself and the neighbouring Huertas de Ánimas; the rest are spread among the outlying villages of Belén, Huertas de la Magdalena and Pago de San Clemente and on the farms of the countryside. The municipality covers about 650 square kilometres, much of it dehesa and farmland.

Trujillo is the capital of its comarca and of a judicial district, and it serves the surrounding villages with schools, shops and services. Its history, setting, countryside and food have made it one of Extremadura's main tourist centres, and farming and livestock remain important, reflected in an agricultural and livestock fair as well as the cheese fair. In 2018 the small foreign population came mainly from Romania, Colombia and Morocco.

Daily life is unhurried. The square is the meeting place, with its bars and terraces busy in the evening; much of the business on it now serves visitors. A single urban bus line connects the outlying villages with the centre, aimed at older residents who need to reach shops and offices.

Trujillo's cooking is that of the Extremaduran countryside. Among the typical dishes of the town are migas extremeñas, frite de cabrito, made with kid, moraga, prueba del cerdo, a dish from the pig, landrillas de ternera, made with veal, and criadillas de la tierra served with wild asparagus. Soups are a tradition too: sopa de obispo, made with hen, and tomato soup.

Cheese is the town's pride. Cheeses of the Queso Ibores designation are made in Trujillo, and the region's soft sheep's-milk Torta del Casar and Torta de la Serena and Los Ibores goat's cheese are well known. Many local cheese makers and farmers mature their own cheeses from the milk of their goats or sheep, and every spring the National Cheese Fair fills the Plaza Mayor with stands from across Spain.

Ibérico ham, from black Iberian pigs fed on acorns, is the other great product of the region. Trujillo also produces wine under the Ribera del Guadiana designation and the wider Vino de la Tierra de Extremadura label. In the Plaza Mayor, bars and restaurants serve these local products to visitors and residents alike.