When he wrote "Don Quixote", Miguel de Cervantes did not reveal the name of the birthplace of the eponymous middle-aged gentleman obsessed with heroically correcting the world's injustices and restoring his lost chivalry.
But many recognized the village of rather harsh climate, Argamasila de Alba, with almost 7.000 inhabitants, as Don Quixote's hometown. It is located in the arid, central part of the Spanish region of La Mancha, which resembles a puzzle of yellow and green fields.
"The two most famous things about La Mancha are Don Quixote and our Manchego cheese," says Ángel Gutiérrez, a 55-year-old shepherd and rancher who tends his flock of sheep not far from the peaceful town.
Four hundred years after Cervantes' death, reminders of Don Quixote, his faithful squire Sancho Panza and his beautiful lady Dulcinea abound in the surrounding villages of La Mancha - from delicacies to theatrical performances involving livestock.
Every year, for example, Gutiérrez lends her animals to a theater troupe to reenact on the streets the part of the novel when Don Quixote sees two armies instead of two flocks of sheep.
The region is dotted with historic, snow-white windmills, which are part of the book's most famous episode, when Don Quixote fights them, imagining them to be giants.
Thanks to that scene, the expression storming the windmills, that is, fighting against imaginary enemies, or "quixotic" which now means idealistic and impractical, was born. However, at dusk in Campo de Criptana, the windmills really do appear as floating giants in the distance.
Other locations in La Mancha are also vying for the title of Don Quixote's birthplace, but in Argamasila de Alba, a house with a cave below, where, according to local legend, Cervantes was imprisoned, has been restored.
In the prologue of his masterpiece, Cervantes wrote that his work was created during one of his stays in prison. These days, visitors can see the Medrano cave and imagine Cervantes writing there.
Don Quixote's great, unrequited love Dulcinea, an ordinary farm worker whom he sees as a refined and beautiful lady, supposedly lived in the village of El Toboso, surrounded by vineyards. Sister Isabel, a nun of the strict order of St. Clare, makes candies named after Dulcinea in the monastery's bakery.
Sister Isabel (39) and the other nuns have been making "Los Caprichos de Dulcinea" (Dulcinea's whims) since 2005, so they have become one of the most popular delicacies.
Meanwhile, gray powder lies on the ground in Montesinos Cave near Ruidera Lagoon, where Cervantes is believed to have set the part of the book's plot where Don Quixote falls asleep in the cave and is haunted by fantastic dreams.
The gray powder is the ashes of Bob, the “English Don Quixote,” who came to the region to live with his Spanish wife and began posing as Don Quixote outside the cave and along the lagoons. After his death in a car accident in January, his family decided to scatter his ashes in the places he was so passionately attached to.
Almost quixotic, some would say.
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