A day in Plasencia

We are able to have our breakfast enjoying sunrise over the Sierra de Gredos.  We then set off to explore. Surrounded on three sides by the Río Jerte, Plasencia is a small and manageable city with the usual concrete suburbs and pretty old town.  Several sections of walls remain and prop up the backs of houses.  The streets are narrow and warren like, we hear no English what so ever during our two night stay, in fact we seem to be the only tourists. The authenticity is amazing.  

At the entrance to the old town they have constructed a jolly blue welcome sign. 
 

 

 
I investigate the local history.  Plasencia was founded in 1186 by Alfonso VIII of Castile. He retains a presence in the town. There is a street named after him and he proudly rears up his horse by the blue sign.  

 

Just ten years later, Plasencia was taken over by the Almohad Caliphate, a Moroccan Berber-Muslim dynasty that dominated the Iberian peninsula throughout much of the 12th century. King Alfonso VIII and his forces recaptured the city within the same day!
At the end of the 13th century, the Charter of Plasencia was created, allowing the Christian, Moorish and Jewish people to live peacefully together within the city. This charter prompted the formation of a Jewish community in Plasencia, which became the largest in Extremadura at that time and held a considerable amount of economic power.  In 1446, the first university in Extremadura was installed in Plasencia.  King Ferdinand of the 'Reyes Católicos ' moved here in 1515 at the advice of his doctors who felt it was a healthy place.  I agree. The air is lovely and pure. 


Plasencia is in the autonomous region of Extremadura which was formed in the medieval period and then divided into two different provinces: Cáceres and Badajoz in the 19th century. Plasencia argued with Cáceres about which of them should be the capital of the province, Cáceres won this argument. 
 
During the Restoration, Plasencia witnessed many positve reforms. For the first time the city had a drinking water network, public lighting, and an improved sewer system. Furthermore, the agrarian economy evolved into an industrial one.  In this period, the painter Joaquín Sorolla immortalized the city in his painting El mercado in 1917.  

During the Spanish Civil War, the city quickly fell to Franco's fascist regime. 

In the 20th century the population of Plasencia tripled and the city continues to thrive.