Castile-La Mancha
is an autonomous community of Spain.
Castile-La Mancha is bordered by
Castile and León, Madrid, Aragon, Valencia, Murcia,
Andalusia, and Extremadura. 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.
Castile-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
semi-autonomous regions ("las autonomías"), it was separated
due to great demographic disparity between the capital and
the remaining New-Castilian provinces. Also, compared to the
former New Castile, Castile-La Mancha add the province of
Albacete, which had been part of Murcia; adding Albacete
placed all of La Mancha within this single region.
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 the
Spanish culture with its sunflowers, mushrooms, oliveyards,
windmills, Manchego cheese, and Don Quixote.


