Luxury hotel holidays to the Heart of Spain

Heart of Spain - Frequently Asked Questions

Most people visiting Spain head straight to Andalusia or the coast. What makes the Heart of Spain — Castile, La Mancha and Extremadura — worth a holiday in its own right?

The Heart of Spain is one of the most genuinely rewarding and least visited parts of the country, and the reason most people overlook it is simply that it doesn't have the obvious marketing hook of Andalusia or the beaches. What it does have is extraordinary: a concentration of historic cities that are among the finest in Europe but without the visitor numbers that overwhelm the more famous destinations, a landscape that ranges from the high plateau of La Mancha — flat, windswept, dotted with hilltop castles and ancient windmills — to the green river valleys and Roman cities of Extremadura in the west, and a depth of history that runs from Roman occupation through Moorish rule, Christian reconquest and the age of the conquistadors. Toledo alone — where Christian, Moorish and Jewish cultures coexisted and left behind a layered city of extraordinary richness — is worth the flight. Salamanca, with its golden sandstone university city and one of the most beautiful plazas in Spain, is another. Segovia has a Roman aqueduct that has stood for two thousand years and a fairy-tale castle on a rocky crag above the plain. Ávila is entirely surrounded by its original medieval walls. These are not minor sights: they are among the greatest in Europe, and the fact that you can visit them without queuing or fighting for a restaurant table is a genuine advantage. A fly-drive holiday here suits a particular kind of traveller — curious, unhurried, interested in history and in seeing Spain beyond the brochure — and for that client it is one of the most satisfying holidays we offer.

You mention paradores throughout this region. Which are the most special, and how do you build an itinerary around them?

The Heart of Spain has some of the finest paradores in the whole network, and this is the region where the parador concept — historic buildings converted into hotels, each one rooted in its setting — really comes into its own. The Parador de Toledo occupies a hilltop position above the city with views across the entire old town that are simply unforgettable, particularly at dusk when the cathedral and the roofline of the city glow in the evening light. The Parador de Cáceres is a fifteenth-century palace in the heart of Cáceres old town — itself a UNESCO World Heritage Site — with interiors of great character and a restaurant serving Extremaduran cuisine including the region's famous Ibérico ham and local game. The Parador de Trujillo, a converted sixteenth-century convent in the centre of a town that produced some of Spain's greatest conquistadors, has a beautiful cloister garden and a serene quality that is entirely at odds with the dramatic history on its doorstep. The Parador de Cuenca is extraordinary: a converted fourteenth-century convent perched above the gorge of the Júcar, directly opposite the famous hanging houses of Cuenca and connected to the old town by a medieval bridge. The Parador de Sigüenza occupies a twelfth-century castle, one of the most imposing parador buildings in Spain. A fly-drive itinerary connecting four or five of these in sequence — perhaps Toledo, Cuenca, Sigüenza and then west to Cáceres and Trujillo — gives you nine or ten nights that feel completely different from any other holiday in Spain, staying in buildings that are historical monuments in their own right and exploring the surrounding country at your own pace.

We have heard of Salamanca but not really explored it. And what is the Hacienda Zorita?

Salamanca is one of those cities that surprises people who come to it without high expectations and leaves them wondering why they had never been before. It is a university city — one of the oldest in Europe, founded in 1218 — and the combination of student energy, golden Plateresque stonework and a Plaza Mayor that most Spanish cities would give anything to have makes it one of the most enjoyable places to spend two or three days in Spain. The old and new cathedrals stand side by side; the university facade is a masterpiece of Renaissance decoration; and the city has a warmth and liveliness that the more heavily visited historic cities can sometimes lack. The Hospes Palacio de San Esteban, a five-star hotel in a converted sixteenth-century monastery in the old town, is our recommended base for the city itself — beautifully restored, with the original stonework and cloisters intact and modern comfort throughout. Seven miles outside Salamanca, on the banks of the River Tormes, the Hacienda Zorita is something quite different and one of our most distinctive hotels in Spain. Founded as a monastery in 1366 and later converted into a flour mill, the estate has been brought back to life as a five-star wine hotel and spa producing its own wines under the Marqués de la Concordia label. The restaurant, Zorita's Kitchen, holds a Michelin star and uses produce grown on the estate. The wine and olive spa is genuinely unusual. We offer a dedicated five-night food and wine holiday based here — with a dinner with wines, a wine tasting and a spa treatment included — or it works equally well as part of a broader Castile touring itinerary, combining a stay at Zorita with the paradores to the south.

The literary and historical connections to this region seem extraordinary — Don Quixote, the conquistadors, Cervantes. How does that come alive on a holiday?

This is one of the things that makes the Heart of Spain genuinely different from anywhere else in Europe, and it rewards clients who have a sense of history or literature enormously. Don Quixote is the first modern novel — published in 1605, still the most read book in Spanish — and the landscape of La Mancha that Cervantes described, the flat plain, the windmills, the dusty roads between isolated villages, is still entirely recognisable today. The windmills of Consuegra, a row of traditional mills on a ridge above the plain with a medieval castle alongside them, are the most evocative spot in Don Quixote country, and Alcalá de Henares — the birthplace of Cervantes, just east of Madrid and easily visited as a day trip — holds a Cervantes week each October that is worth timing a visit around if literature matters to you. Extremadura has an entirely different historical resonance: this is the region that produced the conquistadors who conquered the New World. Hernán Cortés, who conquered Mexico, was born near Mérida. Francisco Pizarro, who conquered Peru, was born in Trujillo, whose main square is still dominated by his equestrian statue. The palaces the returning conquistadors built with their American gold still line the streets of Trujillo and Cáceres, and the Parador de Trujillo — a converted convent in the centre of town — puts you in the middle of that story in the most direct way possible. Mérida, meanwhile, has Roman ruins that rival anything in France or the rest of Spain: the theatre, the amphitheatre, the circus and the bridge over the Guadiana are all exceptionally well preserved and the site museum is one of the finest Roman collections in Europe. A fly-drive itinerary that weaves together the literary landscape of La Mancha, the university cities of Castile and the conquistador towns of Extremadura gives a kind of depth and narrative that few holidays anywhere can match.

How does a fly-drive holiday work here, and can we combine the Heart of Spain with Madrid or with Andalusia?

Fly-drive is the natural way to explore this region, and it is also one of the easiest self-drive holidays in Spain. You fly into Madrid — well served from all UK airports — collect a hire car at the airport and from that point the whole of central Spain is accessible. The cities and paradores are spread across a large area but the roads are excellent and relatively uncrowded, distances between stops are manageable, and the landscape itself — the vast open plateau, the mountain passes, the river gorges — is worth driving through rather than flying over. A typical fly-drive itinerary of seven to nine nights might open in Toledo, an hour south of Madrid and the logical first stop, then move through Cuenca or Sigüenza before crossing to Extremadura for Cáceres, Trujillo and Mérida, returning north through Salamanca and Ávila to drop the car and fly home from Madrid. The combination with Madrid is very natural and popular: two or three nights in the capital — the Prado, the Reina Sofía, the Retiro Park — followed by a fly-drive loop through the surrounding region gives a complete picture of central Spain. The combination with Andalusia is also a well-established route: the drive south from Madrid through Toledo and La Mancha to Córdoba or Seville is very doable over two days with an overnight stop, and several of our touring itineraries follow exactly this arc, often spending a night in Baeza or Úbeda — two Renaissance towns in the olive country of northern Andalusia that feel completely undiscovered and have excellent parador hotels — on the way south. We handle all the logistics: flights, hire car, hotel sequence and any included experiences, so the drive itself feels like exploration rather than administration.