Varley exhibited watercolours of Cuidad Rodrigo in Portugal in 1814 and, as 'Ciuidad Rodrigo', 1816, both as being taken from sketches by 'Captain Dumaresq, of the 9th Regiment', as were a number of other exhibitions in 1814. Views of 'Coimbra, Portugal' and 'Burgos, Spain' were exhibited in 1812 and 1814 without any such endorsement, but there is no record of Varley actually visiting Spain or Portugal. As C.M. Kauffmann remarks, Varley 'copied available drawings superimposing the compositional schemata he had developed for his depiction of north Wales' (C.M. Kauffman, John Varley 1778-1842, London 1984, p. 51). Varley gave lessons to Col. Dumaresque and later intorduced him to John Linnell (op. cit., p. 56).

There is a pencil drawing of of the same town from a nearer viewpoint on the back of this watercolour. Ciudad Rodrigo is in fact just on the Spanish side of the frontier with Portugal and would have been newly famous at the time of Varley's drawing on account of Wellington's famous assault, resulting in victory after only twelve days' siege, on 19 January 1812