Castilla–La Mancha


Castilla–La Mancha is an autonomous community of Spain. Comprising the provinces of Albacete, Ciudad Real, Cuenca, Guadalajara and Toledo, it was created in 1982. The government headquarters are in Toledo, which is the capital de facto.
It is a landlocked region largely occupying the southern half of the Iberian Peninsula's Inner Plateau, including large parts of the catchment areas of the Tagus, the Guadiana and the Júcar, while the northeastern relief comprises the Sistema Ibérico mountain massif. It is one of the most sparsely populated of Spain's regions, with Albacete, Guadalajara, Toledo, Talavera de la Reina and Ciudad Real being the largest cities.
Castilla–La Mancha is bordered by Castile and León, Madrid, Aragon, Valencia, Murcia, Andalusia, and Extremadura. Prior to its establishment as an autonomous community, its territory was part of the New Castile region along with the province of Madrid, except for Albacete province, which was part of the former Murcia region.

Geography

Castilla–La Mancha is located in the middle of the Iberian Peninsula, occupying the greater part of the Submeseta Sur, the vast plain composing the southern part of the Meseta Central. The Submeseta Sur is separated from the Submeseta Norte by the mountain range known as the Sistema Central. Despite this, the region has no shortage of mountain landscapes: the southern slopes of the aforementioned Sistema Central in the north, the Sistema Ibérico in the northeast, and the Sierra Morena and Montes de Toledo in the south.
Castilla–La Mancha is the third largest of Spain's autonomous regions, with a surface area of, representing 15.7 percent of Spain's national territory.
The regional urban structure is polycentric, with no dominant central city. Insofar the largest municipality is located in the peripheral southeast, Madrid, exerts influence over the extension of the so-called into the province of Guadalajara as well as the north of the province of Toledo. The rest of urban centres lie on the central plains, contrasting with the sparsely populated mountains and other peripheral areas.

Relief

The Meseta is the dominant landscape unit of a great part of the territory of Castilla–La Mancha: a vast, uniform plain with little relief.
The west-to-east Montes de Toledo range cuts across the meseta separating the Tagus and the Guadiana drainage basins. The most outstanding peaks of this modest mountain range include La Villuerca and Rocigalgo.
In contrast, a more mountainous zone surrounds the Meseta and serves as the region's natural border. In the north of the Province of Guadalajara, bordering Madrid and Segovia, is a mountain range forming part of the Sistema Central, among which can be distinguished the mountain ranges Pela, Ayllón, Somosierra, Barahona and Ministra, with the headwaters of the rivers Jarama, Cañamares and Henares. The Sistema Central also penetrates the northwest of the province of Toledo: a southwest to northeast sub-range known as the Sierra de San Vicente, bordered on the north by the Tiétar and on the south by the Alberche and the Tagus, rising up to its maximum heights at the summits of Cruces, Pelados and San Vicente.
On the northwest is the Sistema Ibérico, where there is important fluvial and especially karstic activity, which has given rise to such landscapes as the Ciudad Encantada, the Callejones de Las Majadas and the Hoces del Cabriel.
In the southeast is the ridge of the Sierra Morena, the southern border of the Meseta Central and the region's border with Andalusia. Within the Sierra Morena, distinction can be made between the Sierra Madrona, Sierra de Alcudia and Sierra de San Andrés. At the other southern extreme of Castilla–La Mancha, the Sierra de Alcaraz and Sierra del Segura form part of the Sistema Bético.

Hydrography

The territory of Castilla–La Mancha is divided into five principal watersheds. The Tagus, Guadiana, and Guadalquivir drain into the Atlantic Ocean and the Júcar and Segura into the Mediterranean Sea. The Tagus provides water for some 587,000 inhabitants in a watershed of. It includes the entire province of Guadalajara and the greater part of the province of Toledo, including the two largest cities of the latter province: the capital, Toledo, as well as Talavera de la Reina.
The Guadiana watershed extends in Castilla–La Mancha, 37 percent of that river's entire watershed, with a population of 583,259 inhabitants. It includes the southern part of the province of Toledo, nearly all of the province of Ciudad Real, the southwest of the province of Cuenca and the northwest of the province of Albacete. The Guadalquivir watershed extends over 5.2 percent of the surface area of the autonomous community, extending through the southern parts of the provinces of Ciudad Real and Albacete, including such important population center as Puertollano.
The Júcar watershed had, in 2006, 397,000 inhabitants in an area of, 19.9 percent of the Castillian-Manchegan territory and 36.6 percent of total of the Júcar watershed. It includes the eastern parts of the provinces of Cuenca and Albacete, including their respective capitals. Finally, the 34 municipalities of southeastern Albacete fall in the Segura watershed, with an extent of.

Climate

The predominant climate in Castilla–La-Mancha is the hot summer mediterranean climate, while the cold semi-arid climate is also significant occupying most of the provinces of Toledo and Albacete. The warm summer mediterranean climate can also be found, especially in the north of the community. To a lesser extent, there is the presence of an oceanic climate along the border with Aragon.
Lack of a marine influence leads to much more extreme temperatures: hotter summers and quite cold winters, with a daily oscillation as high as on some areas. Summer is the driest season, with temperatures often exceeding, and temperatures above are common in several areas. In winter, temperatures often drop below, producing frosts on clear nights, and occasional snow on cloudy nights. Most of the community has continental influences, although the climate is not exactly continental, as the average temperatures in the coldest month are above. Annual temperature ranges can reach over.
Castilla–La Mancha is part of what has traditionally been called España Seca. Precipitation in general is relatively scarce, even in areas with a Mediterranean climate, although there are areas that receive more than. Precipitation presents a notable gradient from the center of the region, where it does not surpass per year, to the mountains where it can exceed per year, on the slopes of the Sierra de Gredos and the Serranía de Cuenca. The greater part of the region has less than of rain annually. The driest area of Castilla-La-Mancha is in the southeast of the community, near the border with the Region of Murcia, where rainfall does not exceed.

History

Early human history of the territory

;Prehistory and protohistory
The presents material linked to the transition from earlier settlers to the Early Acheulean. Archaeological sites related to the Middle Acheulean in the current-day region lie on the Campo de Calatrava as well as in the source of the Villanueva river, the Guadiana catchment area and the Segura catchment area. The Upper Acheulean sites are mostly located within the limits of the current-day province of Ciudad Real, substantially increasing in number and territorial spread across the region for the ensuing Middle Paleolithic. The Upper Paleolithic in the region presents instances of the art of the Upper Paleolithic in the Serranía del Alto Tajo and the Upper Júcar. There are instances of Cardium pottery in Caudete from the Early Neolithic.
The natural region of La Mancha presents a number of archaeological sites related to the so-called Culture of Las Motillas of the Bronze Age, tentatively considered as the earliest reported case of human culture in Western Europe able to implement a system of underground water collection, whose installment is possibly connected to the surface water crisis caused by the 4.2 kiloyear event. A number of these Bronze Age settlements, the motillas, were built over Chalcolithic settlements.
During the Iron Age II, the territory occupied by the current provinces of Ciudad Real and Albacete had a larger influence from Punic-Phoenician and Greek colonists, while the territory occupied by the current provinces of Toledo, Guadalajara and Cuenca was more influenced by the substrate of the earlier Atlantic Bronze, helping to line up the diffuse separation of two large groups of pre-Roman peoples.
Iberian-related peoples dwelling the southern rim of the inner plateau such as the Oretani and Contestani were organised in tribes ruled by a kinglet or chieftain, each one controlling a number of settlements. The main cog of the Iberian form of settlement was the oppidum. From the 7th century BC onward, the Celtiberian settlements were characterised instead by the somewhat smaller castros.
;Antiquity
In the 2nd century BC, by the time of the advent of the Roman conquest wars, the first actual cities had begun to grow in the inner plateau. The Roman conquest brought substantial transformations to the Carpetani urban settlements, including the social division between slaves and freemen, the monetary economy, the fostering of manufacture and trade or the new Roman acculturation.
The territory of the current region was mining-rich in Antiquity, with mentions in classical sources to the mining of cinnabar from, silver, gold and other minerals such as selenite from Segobriga and the laminitana sharpening stone.
;Middle Ages history
File:Vigilianus.jpg|thumb|A number of nobles and clerics attending to a council in Toledo as illustrated in the 976 Codex Vigilanus.
Built from scratch on state initiative, the founding of the city of Reccopolis by Visigoths in the late 6th century was a singular development in the context of the European Early Middle Ages.
Following the 8th century Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula, just after the 741 Berber Revolt, the so-called Middle March of Al-Andalus was created as territorial sub-division, existing for the rest of the ensuing emiral and caliphal period of Al-Andalus. During this era, the Middle March had eminently a military nature, both shielding the core of Al-Andalus from the raids of the Northern Christian polities as well as serving as staging ground for Muslim offensive campaigns against the former. Berber clans such as the Masmuda Banu-Salim or the Hawwara Banu Zennun had an important role in the Muslim settlement of parts of the Middle March. The city of Toledo stood distinctly unruly towards the Cordobese authorities, and remained a major city of al-Andalus, preserving quite of its former importance and hosting a leading cultural centre that lasted even after the Christian conquest.
As consequence of the fitna of al-Andalus in the early 11th century, an independent polity with its center in Toledo, emerged, roughly occupying the territory of the current-day provinces of Toledo, Ciudad Real, Guadalajara and Cuenca,
Following the Christian conquest of Toledo in 1085, the ensuing unsuccessful attempts by North-African Almoravids and Almohads to take the city turned the territory of the inner plateau south of the Tagus subject to extreme warfare for about a century and a half. The military insecurity south of the Tagus constrained the colonisation process undertaken by the new Castilian rulers. This underpinned the features of a sparse population in the region; as a result, ranching became a mainstay of the economy, which later led to the leading role of the military orders. The latter controlled over 20,000 km2 in the region of "La Mancha", managed from just 25 castles. The weak Christian grip over the territory collapsed after their crushing defeat from the Almohads in Alarcos. Christian control south of the Tagus would only start to consolidate after the 1212 battle of Las Navas. The weak settlement and insecurity also allowed for countryside banditry in the area of the Montes de Toledo until its progressive quelling, already effective by the late 13th century. By that time, rural beekeepers self-organised to repel the predatory practices in the by the golfines, whose presence in the Montes de Toledo was further obliterated by the creation of the so-called hermandades viejas by councils at Toledo, Talavera or Villa Real in the dawn of the 14th century.
Despite a poorly representative degree of permeability, urban oligarchies in the current-day region during the Late Middle Ages were largely perpetuated by means of lineage, through inheritance and marriage. Following the ascension of the Trastámaras, the territory of the current-day province of Toledo underwent a process of seigneuralization, and a number of non-religious lordships were progressively created in the area. The 15th century also brought a growing importance of the political elites belonging to towns of the southern meseta in the affairs of the Crown of Castile relative to the prior uncontested preponderance of those elites from towns north of the Sistema Central.
;Modern history
Throughout the 18th century, following the War of Spanish Succession, the Spanish Bourbon monarchs sought to equilibrate the commercial balance with the exterior carrying out an economic policy that tried to foster industrial capacity through economic interventionism. The State shall either stimulate the capacity of private capital or simply provide the capital itself. Examples of royal manufactures created in the 18th century included the Real Fábrica de Paños in Guadalajara, the in Talavera de la Reina, or the in Brihuega.
The current provincial configuration roughly dates from the 1833 division by Javier de Burgos, establishing the outline of the modern provinces of Albacete, Ciudad Real, Cuenca, Guadalajara and Toledo, bar relatively minor later adjustments. Albacete was part, together with Murcia of a wider region, whereas Ciudad Real, Cuenca, Guadalajara, and Toledo formed a region together with the Province of Madrid, "New Castile". The justice administration stood in between the national and provincial levels of government, with the audiencia of Albacete managing the provinces of Albacete, Cuenca and Ciudad Real, and the audiencia of Madrid managing the provinces of Toledo and Guadalajara.
The aforementioned modifications to the 1833 division include the party of Villena, Requena, Villarrobledo or Valdeavero. The provincial government institution was the provincial deputation.
The agrarian capitalism favoured by the bourgeoisie in the 19th century enshrined an economy based on cereal commodities and the primary sector, favouring the leveling of the reduced industrial activity—chiefly textile—in the territory corresponding to the current-day region, whereas mining output—with sites such of the mercury deposits in Almadén or the coal deposits in Puertollano—remained below potential. A silver rush broke out in the mining district around Hiendelaencina after 1844. Large-scale mining of lead and zinc in San Quintín ensued in between 1884 and 1934. The arrival of railway transport in the mid 19th-century subordinated the interests of the provinces to those of Madrid and the Levante, although it fostered the development of some urban centres such as those of Alcázar de San Juan, Manzanares and Albacete. The five provinces lost relative demographic weight relative to the national total over the course of the century.
The territory of the current-day region was singularly affected by the desamortizaciones, particularly those of Mendizábal and Madoz. From 1836 to 1924 of land were auctioned. They were purchased by the political and economic elites of the country.
Seeking to curb immigration to the Spanish capital, the so-called Madrid Decongestion Plan of 1959 created planned industrial estates in Alcázar de San Juan, Manzanares, Guadalajara, and Toledo. The plan did not yield the expected results as Madrid kept growing and the industrial zones eventually stagnated.