Route of the Lazarillo

A literary route that follows the itinerary that Lazarillo travelled on his return from Salamanca, as recorded in the book that narrates his adventures and misadventures. This proposal allows the traveller to delve into our literature and recreate the experiences of Lazarillo accompanying the blind man on his way. This anonymous Spanish novel, Lazarillo de Tormes, is one of the most recognised works of Spanish literature. A precursor of the picaresque genre, it tells the story of the life of the young Lazarus in the 16th century and all the adventures he has with the cruel blind man who makes him see the world as it is, with all the wickedness and misery that fills it. Lázaro’s journey takes him from his native Salamanca to Toledo, but here we will only focus on the Toledo section.

This journey takes us from Almorox to Toledo. The book tells that in the town of Almorox made the first stop along the way, in this part of the story the boy shared the grapes with the blind man and both tried to cheat to eat more than the other. Almorox welcomes the visitor with its spectacular pine forest and its PR-TO 14 hiking route, a green lung that allows you to enjoy nature and then go into the town centre to contemplate its late Gothic church, the main square with its Renaissance pillory and the town hall from the end of the 18th century.

From Almorox the journey of Lazarillo and the blind man leads the visitor to the town of Escalona. In this medieval town in Toledo, Lazarillo de Tormes put the blind man he served in the middle ground after cruelly deceiving him. It is here that Lazarillo gobbled up and returned the sausage and where he plotted to make the blind man jump against the post of the square, dismembering him. In this town the visitor will be able to enjoy a village situated on the banks of the Alberche river, a river that provides a natural environment of great beauty and scenic value with beaches adapted for bathing. Its urban area is surrounded by a walled enclosure with several access gates dating from the 12th century, next to which is the 15th century Mudejar style castle and the 16th century Conceptionist convent. To stroll through its streets is to recreate the medieval life of a village where Lazarillo and the blind man once walked on their way to Toledo.

On this literary journey to Toledo, the route takes us to the town of Maqueda, a small village with a medieval flavour that preserves its castle which was built in the 15th century on the remains of a Roman fortress, which was extended in the Arab period. Next to it are preserved several albarran towers from the same period that belonged to the walled enclosure that this town had and whose best example is preserved in the church of Santa María de los Alcázares, in Gothic-Mudejar style, built over the arches of the entrance gates to the old walled enclosure, which has allowed the conservation of the caliphal gate of this enclosure.