Argamasilla de Alba

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Spanish. (July 2020) Click [show] for important translation instructions.

View a machine-translated version of the Spanish article.
Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia.
Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article.
You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Spanish Wikipedia article at [[:es:Argamasilla de Alba]]; see its history for attribution.
You may also add the template {{Translated|es|Argamasilla de Alba}} to the talk page.
For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Municipality in Castile-La Mancha, Spain

Flag

Coat of arms

39°07′45″N 3°5′20″W / 39.12917°N 3.08889°W / 39.12917; -3.08889Country

SpainAutonomous communityCastile-La ManchaProvinceCiudad RealComarcaManchaJudicial districtTomellosoGovernment

• MayorPedro Ángel Jiménez Carretón (PSOE)Area

• Total242 km² (93 sq mi)Elevation

671 m (2,201 ft)Population

(2018)^[1]

• Total6,901 • Density29/km² (74/sq mi)DemonymArgamasillerosTime zoneUTC+1 (CET) • Summer (DST)UTC+2 (CEST)Postal code

13710

Argamasilla de Alba is a municipality in the Province of Ciudad Real, Castile-La Mancha, Spain. It has a population of 6,791.

According to local legend, Don Quixote author Miguel de Cervantes was held prisoner here, and refers to the municipality in the prologue of Don Quixote Part I, making a joke about imprisonment – "engendered in a jail" – because the word "argamasilla" is Spanish for "mortar". The text talks about it as the place where Don Quixote is buried, and that the "Academicians of Argamasilla" meet at the gravesite.

Contrary to the foundation of the joke, Argamasilla de Alba has never had a group of academicians working there, and modern Cervantes scholars believe this is a reference to his well-documented imprisonment in the Cárcel Real of Seville. José María Casasayas, founder of the Asociación de Cervantes, delivered a paper in 1999 in which he proposed that the town in Part I of the novel was Argamasilla de Alba, but in Part II, internal evidence suggests it was Argamasilla de Calatrava, a confusion deliberately created by Cervantes.^[2]

The town's tourist and cultural office is located in a rebuilt house, the "Casa de Medrano", which contains beneath the "Cave of Medrano", in which Cervantes' imprisonment allegedly took place. In the nineteenth century, Juan Eugenio Hartzenbusch had a printing press set up in the cave and printed there an edition of Don Quixote. In keeping with the action of the novel's "Academicians of Argamasilla", the Asociación de Cervantistas held its annual meeting in Argamasilla de Alba in 1995, and returned for a meeting in 2005.^[3]

Gallery

Casa de Medrano, with signage Prision de Cervantes
Interior of the Casa de Medrano
Monument to Don Quixote, by Cayetano Hilario Abellán.
Windmill

References

^ Municipal Register of Spain 2018. National Statistics Institute.
^ Anales Cervantinos, 35, 1999.
^ Perspectivas en los estudios cervantinos. (Homenaje a José María Casasayas). Ed. José Ramón Fernández de Cano y Martín. Cervantes 17.1 (1997): 4-180. Existen dos portadas, una con foto de Casasayas. En línea: <http://www2.h-net.msu^{[permanent dead link]}. edu/~servants/s97.htm>.