(Photo by DEA / W. BUSS/De Agostini/Getty Images)
New information is emerging about a couple of the shooting locations for Game of Thrones Season 7: the small town of Malpartida de Cáceres, Trujillo Castle, and the city of Cáceres itself. All of these locations are situation in the Cáceres region of Spain, which is becoming the production’s hub in that country. The good people at Spanish-language fansite Los Siete Reinos recently took a field trip out to these locations to see what the lay of the land was like. The pictures and information they brought back gave hints about what they will be used for.
WARNING: POTENTIAL SPOILERS AHEAD
Let’s look at Malpartida first. According to reports, this location has been booked for almost a month by the production, from mid-November to mid-December, and is assumed to be where next season’s major battle scene will be filmed. As LSR notes, when this information originally broke, everyone concentrated on Los Barruecos, a striking waterfront area. We wondered if the production was going to film a Normandy-invasion type of sea-to-land battle. But per LSR, the battle will be filmed in an area called Las Breñas, a little northeast of Los Barruecos. It looks like it’ll be a land battle, after all.
Las Breñas. (Via Los Siete Reinos: https://t.co/TlHzG5Oet0) pic.twitter.com/rH5gzHRvzW
— Winter is Coming (@WiCnet) October 25, 2016
That area should be greener come November and December, by the way.
Like the area in Saintfield, Northern Ireland, where the production filmed the Battle of the Bastards, the Season 7 battle will be filmed on a private estate, the better to keep away prying eyes. Per LSR, filming here calls for around 500 extras and 100 horses. And at least one dragon, although LSR couldn’t completely confirm that last bit.
According to LSR, the production will indeed shoot a few things at Los Barruecos, but most of their time will be spent around Las Breñas. What smaller scenes are shot around Los Barruecos will take place at Barrueco de Arriba.
Barrueco de Arriba. (Via Los Siete Reinos: https://t.co/TlHzG5Oet0) pic.twitter.com/x2hZnu3xrj
— Winter is Coming (@WiCnet) October 25, 2016
Again, picture it being greener. Finally, LSR has learned that HBO will be filming characters being carried in fancy litters down paths in these areas. We’re not sure who, though. We’ve seen the Lannisters travel that way around King’s landing, as well as Olenna. It’s hard to image Dany would submit to being carried in a box, though.
Moving on to Trujillo Castle, the major information is that the production will reportedly shoot there for three days around November 18. We’d previously heard that they be there for only one. That rules out the idea that it was just being used for a background shot that would later be smothered in CGI, like the bridge of Córdoba was to create the Long Bridge of Volantis.
What will Trujillo be used for? That’s harder to figure out. The folks at LSR suspect it may be used to stand in for somewhere in Essos, since there was a call for extras to play what sounded like female slaves a while back, and they probably won’t be used in Malpartida (where the production didn’t call for any women) or in the city of Cáceres (which will probably stand in for King’s Landing, where there are no slaves). So although most of our characters are back in Westeros, we may not be done with Essos (or slavery) yet. Dany’s going to be *very* disappointed when she finds out.