Jarandilla De La Vera

When you are ready to depart from Oropesa, go west on NV E90 to Navalmoral de la Mata where you turn north on EX119 for a pretty drive through rich, green tobacco fields dotted with drying sheds to Jarandilla de la Vera, overlooking the Vera plain, whose castle (now a parador) was once owned by the Count of Oropesa, and is also where Emperor Charles V resided in 1556 while waiting for his apartments to be completed at the monastery of Yuste, just west of town on EX203. Yuste is famous as the last retreat of Charles V. Mentally and physically burned out after more than three decades at the head of the world’s greatest empire, this is where he died in 1558. You can visit his small palace and share the view he loved of the surrounding countryside. It is easy to imagine the serenity he must have found in this solitude near the end of his otherwise stormy life