I’ve been eyeballed by a golden eagle!” exclaims Sandra Haynes, 52, a retired teacher from Leeds. “I was driving along, and all of a sudden this eagle was 15 feet away from the windscreen. It was coming in to land with those big wings like an aircraft, and it turned its head and looked at me through the windscreen. It was amazing.”

Close encounters of the avian kind are just one of the benefits of moving to Spain’s remote Extremadura region. Next to the Portuguese border in western Spain, until now Extremadura has barely figured on the radar of the legions of sun-worshipping Brits looking to buy houses in Spain. But with vast open spaces — it’s the size of the Netherlands and home to only 1.1m Spaniards — beautiful scenery, empty roads and low property prices, Extremadura has just what Haynes and her husband, Derek, an education consultant, were looking for.

Last Christmas, they decided they had had enough of the home they bought four years ago at Castell de Ferro, halfway between the towns of Malaga and Almeria on the Mediterranean coast.

The Haynes felt the area was being swamped by new housing developments and was no longer the Spain they wanted.

“I don’t want to get totally away from the English,” says Haynes in her new home in Valdecaballeros, tucked away near a forest-fringed lake not far from Guadalupe, in the hills of eastern Extremadura. “But when you get huge numbers of them moving in, they take over an area and the Spanish tend to tactfully withdraw.”

Haynes says she learnt more Spanish in her first two weeks in Valdecaballeros than she did during her whole time on the Costa, and has made new Spanish friends.

Extremadura is drier and less humid than the coast, with very little rain and hot sunny summers — temperatures are usually in the thirties — but jumpers are needed in the winter, especially in the uplands. Two large rivers cross the region — the Tagus and the Guadiana — and a network of reservoirs provides plenty of opportunity for watersports and fishing. In lowland areas, away from the rivers, the countryside can get parched.

The Haynes now live surrounded by vast lakes, forests and nature reserves inhabited by rare birds, flowers and animals, including eagles, boar, wolves and lynx. In their corner of eastern Extremadura, Brits are also rare beasts, and the locals, she says, are friendly, curious and helpful rather than overwhelmed.

Extremadura also means more property for your money than on the Costas. The Haynes, using Peter and Laura Rumney of Country Estate’s office in Herrera del Duque, paid €170,000 (£117,000) for a modern, four-bedroom bungalow, with neat garden and hedges, on an estate built for the managers of a nearby nuclear power plant (the plant was never completed). An extra £9,000 saw a pool put in within two weeks.

Agents say local people are moving out of Extremadura — it has long been one of the poorest regions in western Europe — and in every village, “Se Vende” (For Sale) is to be found daubed on the walls of dozens of properties.

The Rumneys demonstrate the range of homes to be had with a visit to Esparragosa de Lares, a quiet and unspoilt village with stunning views over rolling hills and the deep blue of Lake Serena. The Rumneys say there is not one northern European living in the village, and our arrival prompts curious glances from the black-clad old folk slowly pottering about the place.

For the relatively well-off buyer, there is the Jasmines, a solid, spacious home, on the main street, of an architect who designed and built it himself. One terrace looks up to a medieval castle tottering on a precipitous hilltop, and the other gives on to 30-mile views ending in distant peaks. It’s a lot of house for £180,000, with three storeys, five bedrooms, three bathrooms, six other rooms, a huge garage and basement storage — although there’s no pool.

But would a Brit feel isolated in Esparragosa de Lares? Giving a clue to the conservative nature of Extremadurans, almost every room in the Jasmines has a religious painting or carving on the wall, and animals in the area aren’t just for looking at — it’s serious hunting country.

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