“Do you see over yonder, friend Sancho, thirty or forty hulking giants? I intend to do battle with them and slay them.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote====================================================================
(in the third largest of Spain's autonomous regions) Castilla-La Mancha largely occupies the southern half of the Iberian Peninsula's Inner Plateau. Comprising the provinces of Albacete, Ciudad Real, Cuenca, Guadalajara and Toledo, it was created in 1982 (and its largest city is Albacete).
+ Castilla-La Mancha is known for its knight of Cervantes, for Toledo, (the city of the three cultures), for the Lagunas de Ruidera, and for the suspended houses of Cuenca. The historic region of La Mancha, offers the most surprising destinations. You can still see the famous and historic La Mancha mills, made popular by Cervantes. The mills of Alcázar de San Juan (in Ciudad Real), and Mota del Cuervo (in Cuenca), are still working. The one in Valdepeñas (Ciudad Real) is considered the largest windmill in the world.
"In a place in La Mancha, whose name I do not want to recall, there dwelt not so long ago a gentleman of the type wont to keep an unused lance, an old shield, a greyhound for racing, and a skinny old horse." If you study Spanish, you may have heard this sentence: it is the opening of El Quixote, and it made Castile-La Mancha universally famous. Castile La Mancha is a land of tradition and history, and the setting of many of the battles between the Muslims and the Christians from 1000 BCE to the 13th century. It is also the land that saw the marriage (in 1492) between Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon, known as the Catholic Monarchs. This resulted in the unification of the Crown of Castile and the Reign of Aragon, and it was the beginning of what would become modern day Spain. The vast plains of Castile, dotted with windmills, orchards, and vineyards, are one of the typical Spanish landscapes.
+ Ciudad Real {"Royal City"), the capital of the province of Ciudad Real, is the 5th most populated municipality in the region. It was founded with the name Villa Real ("Royal Town") under the direction of Alfonso X, who granted it a charter that followed the model of Cuenca's. During the Middle Ages, four km (2.5 mi.) of walls and 130 towers protected a population made up of Christians, Muslims, and Jews. Juan II of Castile granted Villa Real the status of city in 1420, thus making it Ciudad Real ("Royal City").
+ Located on a windswept fertile plateau, the landscape of Castilla-La Mancha is richly patterned, with undulating plains of rich henna-colored earth, neatly striped and stippled with olive groves and grape vines, stretching to a horizon you never seem to reach. This is the land where Cervantes set the fictional journeys of Don Quijote with quixotic reminders everywhere; from the solitary windmills to the abundant (mostly ruined) castles.
+ The area’s best known city is glorious Toledo, Spain’s spiritual capital; shown here is the Puerta de Toledo:
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