Don Quijote Country

On leaving Ubeda on Thursday morning we took a quiet back road heading north which passes through green rolling hills covered with olive groves and crossing rivers and reservoirs.  In beautiful sunshine, with the roof down and hardly another car on the road it was a lovely drive.  A little while after joining the main road north the scenery changed drastically as we first climbed up and then dipped down on the motorway around hairpin bends through a deep river gorge.  On the other side was Castilla La Mancha - the vast high and dry plain of central Spain made famous by the book Don Quijote, published by Miguel de Cervantes' back in 1605.  Four hundred years later it remains the most famous book in Spanish literature and reminders of the exploits of the eccentric self-appointed knight are everywhere in the small villages and towns of the area.

Windmills & Moorish Castle, Consuegra

There are a number of villages that claim links to this fictional character and contain tourist attractions that don't really attract tourists.  We avoided them with the exception of Consuegra in Toledo province which has a picture perfect set of windmills of the type that inspired the original book and its most famous passage where a deluded Don Quijote charges at a windmill with his lance thinking that it is an evil giant to be slain.  The windmills have a captivating beauty and are a great contrast to the sleek new wind-farm turbines found on many other hills in central Spain. The photo above is from exactly the same angle as that on the front cover of our road atlas of Spain.     

It is impossible not to be struck by the countryside that gave birth to this very strong symbol of Spanish identity.  It is in someways quite plain in that its flat agricultural land rolls on further than the eye can see, but its dry, sunny climate and the cold winds remind one that this is a place is that is usually either way too hot or way too cold and as such breeds a phlegmatic character in its people who continue to make their living from an increasingly mechanised and agriculture-based economy (wheat and grapevines being the most common crops).  It seems the sort of place that you need to be from in order to live there and despite the attempts to create a Don Quijote theme, one couldn't be further off the tourist track in this country.  There is a feel of an older Spain that existed before Franco died and the tourists arrived.  One can imagine how life was in these quiet rural towns and villages hundreds of years ago as one walks around the sleepy streets and squares, every now and again arriving in a hidden gem such as the Plaza Mayor in Almagro and its neighbouring four hundred year old outdoor theatre.

Plaza Mayor, Almagro

The high of the Reconquest that we learned more about in Granada was followed by the triumphal building of renaissance palaces in places such as Ubeda of course the conquering of much of the Americas during what became known as Spain's "siglo de oro" (golden century).  The intellectual flourishing of Cervantes books and the satirical theatre in places such as Almagro were the expression of that age but turned out to mark the end of the golden age as Spain fell into two centuries of sadness and decline rather like the character Don Quijote himself.  However the traces of that golden era remain and it is good that out of the poverty of the last few centuries the history is being rescued through renovation and brought back to life.