Castilla–La Mancha is an autonomous community of Spain. It is one of the most sparsely populated of Spain’s autonomous communities. Its capital city is Toledo, and its most populous city is Albacete. Castilla–La Mancha was formerly grouped with the province of Madrid into New Castile (Castilla la Nueva), but with the advent of the modern Spanish system of autonomous regions (Estado de las autonomías), it was separated due to great demographic disparity between the capital and the remaining New-Castilian provinces. Also, distinct from the former New Castile, Castilla–La Mancha added the province of Albacete, which had been part of Murcia; adding Albacete placed all of the historic region of La Mancha within this single region.
The history of Castilla–La Mancha has been significant. Its origin lay in the Muslim period between the 8th and 14th century. Castilla–La Mancha was the region of many historical battles between Christian crusaders and Muslim forces during the period from 1000 to the 13th century. It was also the region where the Crown of Castile and Aragon were unified in 1492 under Queen Isabel and King Ferdinand. Castilla–La Mancha is the successor to New Castile (Castilla la Nueva), which in turn traces back to the Muslim Taifa of Toledo, one of the taifas of Al Andalus.
It is mostly in this region where the story of the famous Spanish novel Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes is situated, due to which La Mancha is internationally well-known. Although La Mancha is a windswept, battered plateau, it remains a symbol of Spanish culture with its vineyards, sunflowers, mushrooms, olive plantations, windmills, Manchego cheese, and Don Quixote.
The economy of Castilla–La Mancha continues to be dominated by agriculture and the raising of livestock, but industry is continually more present, including the processing of agricultural goods. In recent years, tourism has been increasingly important, with the growth of agritourism in the form of casas rurales, and the establishment of the Ruta de Don Quijote, a campaign of tourism to the locations mentioned in Cervantes novel. 52 percent of the soil of Castilla–La Mancha is considered “dry”. Agricultural activities have historically been based on the cultivation of wheat, grapes and olives. Castilla–La Mancha has some of the most extensive vineyards in Europe, nearly 700,000 hectares (1,700,000 acres). The vineyards are predominantly, but by no means exclusively, in the west and southwest of La Mancha. In 2005 the region produced 3,074,462 metric tons (3,389,014 short tons) of grapes, constituting 53.40 percent of Spain’s national production.
