Travel in Spain

Travels in Spain. Pedro Antonio de Alarcón

«A visit to the Monastery of Yuste

I
If you are something of a rider (sine qua non condition); if you also have four days and thirty hard to spare, and you have, finally, in Navalmoral de la Mata some acquaintance who provides you with horse and guide, you can easily make a trip of the first order – which will offer you gathered the multiple joys of a geographical-picturesque exploration, the serious interest of a historical and artistic excursion, and the religious complacency of those truly patriotic pilgrimages that, like every duty fulfilled, boast and cheer the soul of those who still respect something on earth… You can, in short, visit the Monastery of Yuste.
To do this… (we assume you are in Madrid) you will start by taking a ticket, saloon or interior, to Navalmoral de la Mata, in the “Diligence of Cáceres” —which leaves daily from the street of the Post Office of this one that was cut, at seven thirty in the afternoon.
The road is generally good, and in no dangerous place. You will pass successively through the Dehesa de los Carabancheles, where the Artillerymen had established their very remarkable practical School —by the Ventas de Alcorcón and by Alcorcón itself, which is as if we were saying by the Sèvres of the current Madrileños—; by Móstoles, where you will remember its organ and its famous mayor of the year 1808; by Navalcarnero, one of the main wineries that supply Peleón to Madrid; by Valmojado, which has nothing wet or valley, because it occupies a very high and clayey terrain; by Santa Cruz del Retamar, abundant in intermittent fevers and coals; by Maqueda, still monumental today, how powerful in Roman antiquity and in the times of our Doña Berenguela —and, finally, by Santa Olalla, homeland of the historian Alvar Gómez de Castro and the preacher Cristóbal Fonseca, both distinguished men and writers—; whereupon, at dawn (since you travel, as we advise, in spring or autumn), you will find yourself in Talavera de la Reina, confirmed (I suppose) recently with the name of Talavera de la República federal.

Excerpt from the text

Madrid, Establecimiento Tipográfico Sucesores de Rivadeneyra, 1918.