Village
Municipality of the comarca of La Mancha, in the province of Ciudad Real, which has long claimed to be the place in La Mancha whose name Cervantes did not wish to recall: its most visited corner is the Cueva de Medrano, the cellar of the old Medrano house where tradition places the writer's confinement and the writing of the first pages of Don Quixote. Some twelve kilometres from the village stand the castle of Peñarroya, raised in the twelfth century by the Order of Saint John, and the reservoir of the same name, downstream from the Lagunas de Ruidera, which extend in part across the district.
Nature
Cellar of the old house of the Medrano family, where tradition places Miguel de Cervantes's confinement and the writing of the first pages of the Quixote. It is the most visited site in Argamasilla de Alba. Also known as the cueva del Alcalde-Medrano, it was declared a Monumento Histórico-Artístico (an earlier heritage-protection category, now incorporated into that of Bien de Interés Cultural) on 26 October 1972, and today holds the rating of Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection). According to legend, Cervantes was held locked up there for four months by order of the marquis Rodrigo de Pacheco, a hypothesis historians consider discounted, since no documentary evidence exists to support it; the claim already appears recorded in 1826 in Sebastián Miñano's Diccionario geográfico de España y Portugal.
Monument
Peñarroya castle rises on a crag overlooking the Guadiana, 12 kilometres from Argamasilla de Alba, next to the reservoir of the same name. It was taken from the Muslims on 8 September 1198 by captain Alonso Pérez de Sanabria, a feat that gave rise to the image of Nuestra Señora de Peñarroya, venerated ever since as patron saint of Argamasilla and of La Solana; in 1215 it passed to the Order of Saint John, of which in the 14th century it became the economically most important commandery, used for collecting rents and as a strongroom. It retains a parade ground of 67 by 43 metres with its old 12th-century church, an outer tower and the keep, square and three storeys high, today the seat of the brotherhood that guards the image of Our Lady.
Monument
The church of San Juan Bautista is the parish temple of Argamasilla de Alba (Ciudad Real) and its main religious building. Juan de Ornero began its construction in 1542; the work was continued by the master stonemason Juan de Rigos, who left it unfinished, until it was partly completed in the 17th century and finished off in the 18th with architectural and ornamental work. In the chapel of the Virgen de la Caridad de Illescas an ex-voto painting donated by Rodrigo Pacheco is preserved, dated 1601, with an inscription recounting his cure through the intercession of Our Lady. Because of the date and the reference to his illness, Pacheco has been identified as the gentleman Cervantes met in Argamasilla de Alba and on whom he based the character of don Quixote.
Nature
The Peñarroya reservoir is a dam used for hydroelectric power and water supply, located in the municipal areas of Argamasilla de Alba and Ruidera, next to Peñarroya castle, within the Lagunas de Ruidera natural park. Its construction was already being considered in 1917, after the floods that Tomelloso and Argamasilla de Alba had been suffering, although work did not begin until 1947 and the reservoir was inaugurated on 23 May 1959. It stores 50 cubic hectometres over 425 flooded hectares, with a dam 44 metres high and 251 metres long at the crest, and supplies water to Tomelloso and Argamasilla besides generating electricity. Twelve kilometres from Argamasilla, downstream of the Lagunas de Ruidera, it is today much frequented for swimming and bird-watching.
Nature
The Parque Natural de las Lagunas de Ruidera is made up of sixteen linked fluvial lagoons strung along the valley of the Guadiana Viejo, separated and joined to one another by travertine barriers that make the water leap from one to the next in small waterfalls; it extends in part over the municipal area of Argamasilla de Alba, besides those of Ruidera, Alhambra, Ossa de Montiel and Villahermosa, and also takes in the Peñarroya reservoir because of its role in water management. Within its boundaries lie Peñarroya castle, the ruins of Rochafrida castle and the Montesinos cave, the setting for don Quixote's descent in Cervantes's novel, as well as the so-called casa del Rey, in the village of Ruidera.
Curiosity
The self-taught sculptor Cayetano Hilario Abellán (Argamasilla de Alba, 1916-1997) left scattered throughout his home town and other towns of La Mancha numerous sculptures on Quixotic, religious and folk themes. The son of Argamasilla's republican mayor during the Civil War, he taught himself to carve stone and wood from childhood, and was unable to devote himself fully to sculpture until the end of the conflict, after spending time in prison between 1944 and 1945 for his communist activism. An admirer of Rodin and Michelangelo and an avid reader of Cervantes, he sculpted life-size figures of don Quixote, Sancho Panza and Dulcinea that dot the town centre, using relatives and friends as models. In 1979 the town council named him favourite son of the city.
Curiosity
Argamasilla de Alba has long claimed to be the place in La Mancha whose name Cervantes did not care to remember, and it organises numerous events around the anniversary of Don Quixote.
Food and drink
Scrambled eggs with pork rashers and chorizo that Cervantes mentions on the first page of Don Quixote among the weekly expenses of the hidalgo. It is still served in the inns of Argamasilla de Alba, where tradition places the author's prison.