Castilla-La Mancha Travel Guide

In popular imagination, La Mancha is the vast, arid plain where the errant knight Don Quijote tilted at windmills. And when you travel through the region, you’ll still see arrays of historic windmills and the ruins of medieval castles. Its cities, on escarpments high above winding rivers, are reminders of Spain’s turbulent past. Every culture from the Romans onward made Toledo its citadel, and sieges were a way of life. Yet these dramatic settings have proved as important to art as to war. In painting his adopted city, El Greco immortalized the skyline of Toledo, and you can marvel at that same view today. The eastern city of Cuenca, perched above a dramatic gorge, became an unlikely home for abstract art in the 1960s. Its hanging houses cling to the rocks like a cubist fantasy.

The name Castilla-La Mancha is a modern administrative fusion of two age-old territories. The first part means “land of castles”, the second comes from the Arabic al-mansha, meaning “parched wilderness”. The vast, sun-bleached tableland (meseta) supports great flocks of sheep, endless vineyards, and the crocuses that produce almost all of Spain’s precious crop of saffron—the world’s most expensive spice. The region’s celebrated cuisine reflects the landscape. Expect roasted game and stews flavored with paprika and saffron, hard Manchego cheese made from sheep’s milk, and plenty of good red wine.

Pictured above is the Júcar River.