La Mancha by car: among windmills, unexpected lakes and medieval villages

We were in Madrid for a long weekend, the first stop on a trip that would later take us to Toledo. While strolling among the stalls of El Rastro, the capital’s famous Sunday flea market, we came across an old second-hand copy of Don Quixote. And it was there, between one yellowed book and another, that the crazy idea was born to change our plans and go and see La Mancha with our own eyes, that land we have all, whether we wanted to or not, heard about at school.

And when you arrive, you immediately understand why Cervantes chose these very lands for his novel Don Quixote: endless landscapes where the windmills rising from the hills are the only feature capable of breaking the horizon. Every little village, every dusty corner, seems to take you back to that precise moment in Spanish history.

That day, born entirely by chance, impressed us so much that the following year we came back —this time taking things slowly, with a whole week at our disposal— to properly set out and discover this land that, deep down, we knew very little about. And that was when La Mancha welcomed us with all its surprises: if you think it is all about an imaginary knight and his wonderful windmills to photograph, then you too are missing the most interesting part. We discovered that behind those landscapes that seem frozen in time lies a land whose roots go back four thousand years before Cervantes, with some of the earliest wells dug by humans in Europe; there is one of the most famous cheese designations in the world; there is Spain’s most prized saffron, still harvested by hand today; there are vineyards stretching as far as the eye can see and, where you least expect it, turquoise lakes and even flamingos in the middle of what everyone imagines to be the driest land in Spain.

La Mancha, in short, is a region that tells its own story, if only you look at it with a little more attention.

So, into the saddle, knights: let our adventure begin.

A brief history of La Mancha

The first misunderstanding to clear up —because I have noticed that many blogs confuse the two— is that Castilla-La Mancha and La Mancha are not the same thing. Castilla-La Mancha is the official autonomous community, with political and administrative status (5 provinces: Toledo, Ciudad Real, Cuenca, Guadalajara and Albacete). La Mancha, on the other hand, is a historical and geographical area with imprecise boundaries, occupying part of those provinces —but not all of them.

La Mancha is in fact a vast plateau within the Meseta, stretching across Toledo, Ciudad Real, Cuenca and Albacete, where you will inevitably find yourself driving along endless roads in search of those windmills we have all heard about.

The history of La Mancha, however, begins long before Don Quixote, long before the Romans, Muslims or Castilians. Around 2200 BC, on the plains of the Upper Guadiana, what archaeologists call the Culture of the Motillas, or Bronce Manchego, began to develop. The name is modern, of course: those inhabitants did not consider themselves “Manchegans” in the sense we understand the term today.

The people of the area began building fortified settlements on artificial mounds between 4 and 10 metres high. The typical structure consisted of a fortified central core, a small surrounding settlement with concentric walls and a nearby necropolis. These are the first true permanent settlements documented in this region.

Their function was twofold: military control of the territory and, even more surprisingly, access to groundwater. The earliest structures appeared around 2200 BC, but it was between 2000 and 1800 BC that the region experienced a particularly severe period of aridity: during this time, communities intensified the construction of these settlements, genuine strategic hubs organised into “jefaturas” (tribal chiefdoms) to control water, grain and the other resources necessary for survival. Taken together, they represent one of the oldest systems in Europe for reaching underground aquifers, within an economy based on agriculture and livestock farming.

Around 32 have been recorded, and the most spectacular example is the Motilla del Azuer, near Daimiel: inside it, archaeologists discovered a well at least 18 metres deep that reached the water table —considered the oldest known system for accessing groundwater on the Iberian Peninsula, and one of the oldest in Europe.

With the arrival of the Romans, La Mancha was incorporated into the vast imperial network: crossed by important communication routes linking the Mediterranean with the interior of the country, it became a crucial hub for trade and military movements. For a long time, the Romanisation of the area was thought to have been limited, but discoveries such as the villas and mosaics of Carranque (Toledo) reveal a stronger presence than previously believed, especially in strategic and mining centres.

After the fall of the Roman Empire came the Visigoths, who made Toledo their capital: a moment of enormous historical importance, because for the first time the plains of the Meseta —and therefore La Mancha— became the centre of political power on the Iberian Peninsula. Despite Toledo’s importance, however, La Mancha should still be imagined as a predominantly rural area, made up of small settlements and villas, crossed by communication routes linking the northern Meseta with Andalusia and the Mediterranean.

It was precisely this combination —a vast territory with few fortified centres— that facilitated the northward expansion of the Muslim troops who arrived from Africa in 711, and the subsequent fall of the Visigothic kingdom: La Mancha thus became part of Al-Andalus, integrated into its political, economic and cultural dynamics.

During the period of Al-Andalus, La Mancha was not the beating heart of Islamic power —which was concentrated instead in present-day Andalusia, with its capital in Córdoba— but a strategically vital frontier region. It was not a land of great cities, but a territory of alquerías (rural villages) and small settlements, often located near fertile river valleys and springs and devoted to agriculture.

Its strategic position, crossed by the main route connecting the capital Córdoba with Toledo (an Arab stronghold in the north of the peninsula), determined its role as a military outpost. It was precisely because of this defensive function that rural fortifications known as ḥuṣūn (singular ḥiṣn) gradually appeared, serving as defensive strongholds and centres of territorial control.

One of the key strategic points was Qalā’t Rabāḥ, ancient Calatrava la Vieja (today Carrión de Calatrava): a true fortified city on the Guadiana, with a medina, alcázar, walls, around forty towers, a moat, mosque, baths, ovens, a cistern, extramural neighbourhoods, craft areas, a cemetery and systems for accessing and controlling the river water. Today the site can be visited —if you are passionate about history, you can find some information here: Castillo de Calatrava la Vieja, Turismo Castilla-La Mancha.

When, in 1147, Alfonso VII succeeded in conquering it in the name of the Christian kingdoms, it marked a turning point in Spanish history: the gradual shrinking of the kingdom of Al-Andalus, which had already begun with the capture of Toledo, was giving way, step by step, to the Christian Reconquista.

As you can imagine, defending these new and insecure frontier territories against the Muslim kingdoms was no easy task: the king therefore divided the region into zones and entrusted each territory to the military orders.

These orders were expected to protect the frontier, garrison castles, conquer territories and encourage their repopulation. They therefore received vast territories, castles, villages, rights and revenues directly from the king in order to defend them —and their role went far beyond simply providing soldiers. They were very often made up of religious men who fought on horseback and who, at the same time, organised the territory through the encomiendas: they administered the lands, collected revenues, attracted new settlers and contributed to the foundation or development of numerous settlements.

La Mancha thus became the land of the military orders: with their castles and encomiendas, they became the true masters of the territory, managing the region’s defence and economy for centuries. To attract new inhabitants to lands that were still sparsely populated and insecure, both the king and the orders themselves —which exercised seigneurial power over their domains— granted fueros: local charters that guaranteed privileges and tax exemptions to those willing to move there and repopulate these frontier lands.

Although strategically important, the region remained largely rural and only lightly urbanised: a network of small towns dominated by large estates —belonging to the military orders and the nobility— whose owners exercised almost undisputed power over vast territories, reinforced by the fueros granted to them by the Crown.

The enormous power of the military orders caused considerable concern for the Crown: a Grand Master at the head of an order such as Calatrava or Santiago held the maestrazgo —a term referring both to his office and to the vast territorial domain that came with it— and therefore controlled enough money, castles, land and men to represent, in the event of conflict, a rival power to the Crown itself. Villa Real (present-day Ciudad Real) was founded precisely as a counterweight to the enormous influence of the Order of Calatrava in the area —a royal town placed outside the authority of the order.

It was only under the Catholic Monarchs, Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon, however, that the issue was finally resolved. The Catholic Monarchs took control of the maestrazgos one by one —starting with Calatrava in 1489, followed by Santiago in 1494 and Alcántara in 1495— arranging for themselves or their relatives to be elected as Masters, until the military orders were officially incorporated under the direct authority of the Crown.

It was in this context that La Mancha, by then firmly established as an inland region of the Kingdom of Castile and no longer a frontier land, was reorganised into small towns centred around a nobleman loyal to the Crown, with an economy devoted mainly to agriculture and related activities.

But the aridity of the land, the scarce rainfall, a sun that in summer turns the Meseta into a scorching oven while in winter giving way to frosts that can reach fifteen degrees below zero —I have been there in both seasons, and I can confirm it— and the constant wind hardly made for flourishing agriculture.

For this reason, over time La Mancha focused on crops capable of surviving in an environment where the lack of water was a serious problem: saffron, secano cereals (dry-farmed, without irrigation), probably pulses, and transhumant livestock farming (Merino sheep, wool). Nor should we forget the exploitation of woodland resources, which, unlike what we see today, were far more widespread across the region —especially holm oak, oak, juniper and Spanish juniper woodland.

Water, as you can see, has always been a critical issue for this region: there are few rivers, rainfall is uncertain and so watermills —which worked perfectly well elsewhere— were unreliable here and did not allow the area’s resources to be fully exploited, starting with the abundant cereals that needed to be ground into flour.

It was precisely this difficulty that taught people to exploit what, by contrast, was plentiful: the wind, which sweeps across the plain with almost obsessive regularity and which, unlike water, never failed. And so, between the 16th and 19th centuries, windmills experienced their true golden age: by making use of the most generous resource this land had to offer, farmers transformed the hills into genuine wind farms.

And it is precisely during this period —more specifically in 1605, with the publication of Don Quixote by Cervantes— that La Mancha became forever associated with the collective imagination. Cervantes took a territory that, in the eyes of many of his contemporaries, may have seemed like a vast rural province to pass through, and transformed it into one of the most famous literary landscapes in the world, dominated by the famous “giants”.

Although it represents a fascinating period from a literary point of view, the 17th century was a time of profound demographic and economic crisis for La Mancha, marked by a sharp decline in population. There were several causes: poor harvests, epidemics and the difficulties of an economic system still too dependent on agriculture, characterised by an unequal distribution of wealth.

Precisely in order to manage such a vast and problematic territory, in 1691 the government decided to separate La Mancha from the rest of the Kingdom of Toledo, officially creating the Province of La Mancha, with its capital in Ciudad Real.

The period between 1700 and 1900 was a time of profound transformation for La Mancha: wars, administrative reforms and political struggles continually redrew its boundaries.

The 19th century, in particular, was a turbulent period for the whole of Spain. In 1808, the Napoleonic invasion swept across the country, triggering the Spanish War of Independence: guerrilla bands also formed in La Mancha, ready to attack French troops along the roads crossing the plain.

Once the war against Napoleon was over, Spain found no peace: the century was marked by the Carlist Wars, civil conflicts between supporters of the liberal monarchy and defenders of traditional absolutism, which repeatedly plunged the country into bloodshed until 1876.

It was precisely at the beginning of this turbulent period, in 1833, that the historic Province of La Mancha was abolished and divided among the new provinces of Ciudad Real, Albacete, Cuenca, Toledo and Jaén —a decision that fragmented the region’s administrative unity and still fuels debates about its boundaries today.

And this is precisely what explains why, although modern-day La Mancha is now politically and administratively fragmented into many different areas, there is still a strong shared cultural identity that brings them together into a single, large imagined community.

A century after the Carlist Wars, Spain was shaken by an even more devastating conflict. Between 1936 and 1939, the Spanish Civil War deeply affected La Mancha, as it did the rest of the country. Much of the territory remained in the Republican rear, playing a crucial strategic role: numerous military units were formed and trained here, including the International Brigades, and the region’s economy became fundamental to the Republican war effort. The mercury mines of Almadén, for example, were a priority target for Franco’s troops.

Franco’s victory was followed by extremely harsh repression. In the province of Ciudad Real alone —which today appears to be the Spanish province with the highest number of executions, around 6% of the estimated 50,000 across Spain— almost 3,900 victims of Francoist repression have been identified, 2,800 of whom were executed by firing squad.

After Franco’s death in 1975, and during the Spanish Transition, the identity of La Mancha once again made itself strongly felt. In 1982, the autonomous community of Castilla-La Mancha was officially created. The name reflects the particular nature of the new region: on the one hand, its historical Castilian heritage; on the other, the identity of La Mancha, which geographically occupies only part of the present-day autonomous community. Even the hyphen joining Castilla and La Mancha has been interpreted as a symbol of the link between these two components.

Today, La Mancha is no longer an official administrative entity, but it remains a very strong geographical and cultural identity, spread across several provinces, with a complex history that goes far beyond the windmills of Don Quixote.

What to see in La Mancha: my itineraries

Today, travelling through La Mancha means taking a journey into late medieval Spain: a rural culture, certainly, but no less elegant or fascinating for that.

Below you will find several itineraries organised according to how much time you can devote to the region. I will tell you more about some of the towns along the way, for those who want to know a little more before setting off.

Because, let’s be honest, if you have enough days to spend here, this region will not disappoint you. Over time, La Mancha has learned how to make the most of its territory, becoming one of the most famous regions in Spain thanks to Don Quixote, one of the tastiest thanks to its food and wine specialities, and one of the most surprising thanks to a natural landscape you would never really expect to find here.

Where to stay in La Mancha

In La Mancha, even where you sleep becomes part of the journey. In a land like this —made up of cave houses, wine cooperatives, medieval castles and convents transformed into hotels— choosing carefully where to spend the night means adding another chapter to your discovery of the region. Here is where we stayed, night by night, along our one-week itinerary.

CAMPO DE CRIPTANA – Where to stay in Campo de Criptana

At first, I had looked at the Hotel Boutique Casa Treviño, housed in a 1905 manor house in the heart of Campo de Criptana, just a short walk from the windmills —contemporary design, an outdoor swimming pool and a curious private “cave spa” carved into the rock. It is a perfect option if you are visiting La Mancha in summer. But for a more authentic and less luxurious experience, choose one of the many cave houses in the Sierra de los Molinos, such as Casa Cueva “El Atardecer”, as we did —rooms carved into the rock, naturally cool temperatures and a terrace often overlooking the windmills. A truly immersive experience.

EL PROVENCIO – Where to stay near Mota del Cuervo and San Clemente

Hospedería Nuestra Señora del Rosario, in El Provencio: it occupies the building of the town’s first wine cooperative, founded in 1950 and expanded in 1964 —one of the few surviving examples in Spain of this kind of post-war industrial architecture. The renovation preserved the original rural-style façade, while the interiors were completely refurbished. It was not my favourite stay, but I have to say that everything was impeccable.

TOMELLOSO / LAGUNAS DE RUIDERA – Where to stay in Tomelloso (or almost)

Here is an unexpected setback that turned into a discovery. We had wanted to stay in Tomelloso, particularly at Casa Rural “El Bombo”, which has one of the traditional dry-stone bombos you will have seen along the Ruta de los Bombos right in its garden. Unfortunately, there was no availability. So instead of settling for the first available hotel in town, we moved closer to the following day’s destination, the Lagunas de Ruidera. And that is how we ended up, almost by chance, at Doña Ruidera —an aparthotel just a short distance from the Natural Park and the Cascada del Hundimiento, with direct views over Laguna del Rey. A real stroke of luck: if the same thing happens to you, do not despair, it may turn out to be the best solution.

MANZANARES – Where to stay near Villanueva de los Infantes

After finishing the day among the Lagunas de Ruidera, and wanting to return to the medieval atmosphere we had experienced between Belmonte and Consuegra, we headed to the Castillo de Pilas Bonas, in Manzanares: a 13th-century castle restored as a hotel, with rooms created in the former stables and an atmosphere that takes you back in time without sacrificing comfort.

ALMAGRO – Where to stay near Daimiel and Almagro

At the end of the trip, we decided to treat ourselves to a slightly more expensive stay at the Parador de Almagro, housed in the former Convent of Santa Catalina, founded in the late 16th century by the Ávila y de la Cueva family and inhabited by Franciscan friars until 1942: one of the most evocative historic buildings in all of La Mancha, with 14 inner cloisters, galleries with traditional blue beams and even an old wine cellar with enormous terracotta tinajas converted into a café. It is definitely worth it!

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Visiting La Mancha is much more than simply taking a trip. It means stepping into a landscape that has become literature, walking through the same lands that inspired one of the greatest novels of all time. It means stopping in front of a windmill and imagining Don Quixote, lance in hand, charging towards it, convinced that he is facing a giant. It means tasting a mature cheese and drinking a glass of Tempranillo as the sun sets over the plain.

In this arid and windswept land, which hides green corners for those who know where to look, there is something that touched my heart and made me feel a little like a child again.

I know that my passion for travel sometimes makes me easily impressed, but if you have one or two free days while visiting Madrid or Toledo, don’t miss this stop… Every now and then, it is wonderful to feel free to become a child again… and remember: Freedom, Sancho, is one of the most precious gifts that heaven has bestowed upon men.