Eulalia was about twelve years old, the story goes, when she walked into the governor's court in Emerita Augusta and told him to his face that his gods were worthless. This was in the year 304, under the persecutions of Diocletian, and what followed made her the patron saint of Mérida. She was tortured and killed, and the city built a shrine over her grave that grew, over the centuries, into one of the great pilgrimage places of Roman and Visigothic Spain. The obelisk in the centre of town, a tall granite shaft by the old basilica quarter, is a reminder that devotion to her goes back to the days when Mérida was a provincial capital and the road north was the Via de la Plata.
Beside it stands the little structure called the Hornito de Santa Eulalia, a small chapel built on and around Roman stones, which tradition holds to be the place where she was martyred. Whether or not that is right, the setting gives a good sense of the city's layers, a pagan temple, a Christian shrine and the flat paving of the modern streets all touching each other. Mérida is that kind of place, where you cannot dig a cellar without finding a mosaic.
For a rider this is a start from the old heart of a calm Extremadura city, and the first minutes are slow, through narrow one-way streets and past plazas with orange trees. After that the country opens quickly. The ride to Alange, about twenty kilometres south-east, runs through the wine land called Tierra de Barros, red earth under olive groves and vines, and ends at a reservoir below a hillside town where a warm spring has been used for bathing since Roman times. The roads are quiet, the surface decent, and corners mild. In July and August the heat is serious, so go early and drink more water than seems reasonable.
Mérida has about fifty-six thousand people, so fuel, supermarkets and cafes are all at hand, with more stations across the river at Calamonte. Mornings in the old streets smell of coffee and warm bread, and by afternoon the shutters are down and the squares fall silent. If you want something local, ask for Iberian ham and a bowl of migas, the fried breadcrumbs that shepherds once made to use up stale loaves.