Spain's Conquistador Country

...the ruthless conqueror of the Inca nation sits on horseback, the bronze feathers in his helmet flying in the breeze. The statue bears one simple word, which sums up the man and his times: Peru

Trujillo: tiled rooftops, steeples, church bells, storks' nests

I am driving through Extremadura, Spain’s remote and (for me) romantic region, sunburned and silent as it extends west from Toledo towards the Portuguese border. Its people are tough and often dour, married to a landscape that’s wide and unyielding. Cork trees and oaks soften its rocky ramparts, goats graze under the watchful eye of youthful goatherds, pigs snuffle about and great banks of jara, fragrant as incense, perfume its rolling hills. Extremadura has a special place in Spanish history, for from its parched earth sprang the conquistadores, the buccaneering explorers who managed to escape their poverty and boredom to change and shape the South America we know today—and become immensely wealthy in the process.

As I roll along in my rented car, I see, as the mountains in the distance get closer, the steepled outline of a town straddling a hill. I am headed for Trujillo, settled originally by the Romans and for five hundred years occupied by the Arabs until the Catholic Kings asserted control of the region. A few minutes later I park the car in a square in the newer part of town, at the base of the hill. From here, the visitor looks up to a skyline dominated by ancient stone buildings separated by narrow, cobbled streets. Halfway up, the town’s Plaza Mayor waits to welcome you, as do swooping storks returning to their nests atop church steeples. This plaza has long been at the heart of all social and commercial life, —and from the 16th century, it attained stately status, as conquistadores and noble families began to build their mansions and palaces around it. Here stands the statue of Trujillo’s most famous son, Francisco Pizarro; the ruthless conqueror of the Inca nation sits on horseback, the bronze feathers in his helmet flying in the breeze. The statue bears one simple word, which sums up the man and his times: Peru.

In the plaza, the conquistador surveys his home town

Francisco was born in Trujillo around 1471, although the actual date is uncertain. He was the eldest of several Pizarro boys, all born illegitimately (each with a different mother) thanks to father Gonzalo Pizarro’s roving eye. Gonzalo was an infantry colonel and Francisco’s mother, Francisca Gonzales, was a humble local beauty. None of the boys were taught to read and write and all grew to manhood with scant parental care. Francisco’s occupation as a young man was a swineherd, and it is small wonder he yearned to escape to adventure. He’d heard tales of the New World and as soon as he was able he went south to Seville, the port from which he ultimately embarked to seek his fortune.

Portrait of a swineherd turned adventurer

We hear of him first fighting in the Spanish wars in Italy and next on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola in 1510. Five years later he was in the Panama area, where he was told of untold riches (and probably of the fabled El Dorado) in a land veiled in obscurity to the south. In 1524, with two associates, Diego de Almagro and Hernando de Luque, and funds to finance an expedition (two vessels and over a hundred men, many from Trujillo, all from Extremadura) the adventurers set off, with Pizarro assuming command and five of his brothers in key positions.

There were difficulties at first, in steaming, fever-infested country, but Pizarro did not lose heart. When at last the explorers encountered natives, who offered no resistance, they observed that many wore gold ornaments. So the tales they’d heard were true: there was gold here and lots of it. The Indians Pizarro met confirmed the reports of a rich country lying farther south, just “ten days’ journey across the mountains”.

Thus began the conquest of the Inca empire in Peru. What wonders awaited these unschooled Spaniards, most born into poverty and now seduced by riches beyond their imaginings! The jewelled gardens of Cuzco, where flowers of emeralds and precious stones glittered amongst branches of gold and silver. The Royal mummies of Coricancha, each seated on a golden throne, dressed in jewelled robes. A golden fountain, sending up a sparkling jet of gold, while golden birds and animals played in the waters at its base. The Temple of the Sun, totally gold plated and gleaming. Time to lay claim to the area, to get rid of the monarch Atahualpa and to subject his people to Spanish rule. Equally important, to divide the spoils, which later lead to disputes and and infighting.

The judicial murder of the emperor of the large and advanced Inca community was both cruel and deceitful. Pizarro invited Atahualpa to dine, held him against his will and then agreed to release him if he filled a room with gold. When this was done, Pizarro reneged on his promise and sentenced him to burn at the stake; he remitted this to strangulation when the poor man agreed to convert to Christianity. As writer H V Morton has observed, Pizarro and his conquistadores were “the first American gangsters and their bloody disputes with each other seem to have set the pattern for all South American revolutions”.

The business of melting down the golden plate and exquisite ornamentation was entrusted to native goldsmiths, who were thus required to undo the work of their own hands. Everything was reduced to bars of a uniform standard —the total value equivalent to about fifteen million dollars today. And that was just the gold. There was silver, too — a huge quantity, reduced in the same way. And jewels of rare beauty. There really is no parallel in history to the booty that fell into Extremaduran hands and made its way back to the little town I now visited—and to Cacares nearby, another old conquistador city constructed in honey-coloured stone. The imposing palaces, both here and there, were built with Inca gold and the mortar that holds those stones in place is mixed with Inca blood.

Pizarro was fifty when he conquered Peru. He later married an Inca princess, Inés Yupanqui and had a daughter Francisca. But he was not, as some think, buried with honours here. He and his brothers all died in faraway lands, perishing by the violence they lived by. Francisco, conqueror of Peru, was slain in Lima by a group of armed men. He is buried in Lima cathedral, where his remains can be viewed in a glass casket.

In the town: arms adorn a mansion; old stone pillars front the plaza

And so I made my way, slowly, under a bright blue sky, up to the top of the hill. I passed seignorial mansions, some with monumental coats-of-arms, representing the pretensions of conquistador nouveaux riche, who, upon their return, decided to put on a show for the locals. The beautiful Plaza Mayor has many such mansions, including the baroque Marquess de la Conquista’s Palace, with its amazing 3-stories high Plateresque corner window. This was built by Francisco’s book-keeping brother Hernando, the only Pizarro boy to survive the conquests and live out his life back home. Higher up the hill is a museum dedicated to Francisco and the nation he conquered. And on the summit is a ruined fortress built by the moors. Up here, you have views over the surrounding countryside, views to the land where Francisco herded swine.

Up top: stone walkway leads to the museum

On my way back down to the car, I stopped for a sherry and a snack: tiny savoury tartas topped with tomato and onion and then a sizzling platter of roast lamb at the Meson Alberca (the food here is hearty and delicious). Then by chance I enjoyed what proved to be a quintessential Spanish experience. Across the way from a huge carved head of a helmeted Francisco was the 15th century Iglesia de Santa Maria, pantheon of Trujillo’s eminent (look inside for the stone seats made for the Catholic Monarchs when they were in residence in the town.) Suddenly, the church bells started pealing. As well-dressed guests arrived, it was obvious a wedding was imminent. A car pulled up, and out stepped the mother of the bride, a vision in pink with a classic black lace mantilla cascading down her back.

A helmeted Francisco watches a wedding party emerge

And then, just as suddenly, it was all over. But what a magic moment, here in old Trujillo — where the storks’ clattering cries, as they swoop back to their nests, seem to echo the anguish of the vanquished Incas.