Almagro

The origins of Almagro are uncertain, though traces of Bronze Age settlement have been found near the Casas Maestrales. Romans appear to have been here too — coins, a Roman gravestone now in the Town Hall, and what one 19th-century witness believed was an aqueduct all point to their presence. The town's name itself comes from Arabic, referring to the distinctive red clay of the area.

It was the Order of Calatrava that truly put Almagro on the map: the Masters chose it as their residence and administrative centre, and tradition holds that a town charter was granted in 1213, confirmed by Fernando III in 1222. Alfonso X convened the Cortes here in 1273. By the late medieval period the town had walls, a castle, a parish church, markets, and a jail.

Trade grew after Enrique II granted two annual fairs in 1374. When the Habsburg emperor Charles V ran into financial trouble, the German Fugger banking family took over revenues from the Almadén mines and planted their administrators — the Wessel and Xedler families — in Almagro, whose townhouses still stand. The town boomed through the 16th and 17th centuries, growing from around 4,000 inhabitants in 1500 to roughly 8,000 by 1597, spilling beyond its walls into new suburbs and filling with churches, convents, and palaces.

The Plaza Mayor is the heart of the town: a long rectangular space originally built as a parade ground, later a commercial fair, with two-storey arcaded galleries on all sides inspired by Flemish design. Opening off it is the Corral de Comedias, a 17th-century open-air theatre courtyard and the only one of its kind to survive intact from that period in Spain.

The streets around the plaza are lined with well-preserved noble townhouses. On the plaza itself stand the Casa del Mayorazgo de los Molina and the Casa de los Rosales. On the Calle de las Nieves are the doorways of the Casa de los Wessel and the Casa de los Xedler, both 16th-century homes of the Fugger banking agents; the Xedler house was relocated here from Calle Franciscas after the Civil War.

Several palaces survive. The Palacio de los Marqueses de Torremejía on Plaza de Santo Domingo, built in the 16th century and remodelled in the 17th, is now a Dominican school. The Palacio de los Condes de Valdeparaíso, owned by the Provincial Council of Ciudad Real, dates in its present baroque form to 1699 and features a colonnaded courtyard, two towers, a chapel with a decorated dome, and elaborate heraldic stonework. The Palacio de los Medrano on Calle San Agustín retains carved wooden ceilings with the owners' coats of arms in one of its towers.

The practical information provided in the source text relates entirely to Buenos Aires, Argentina — none of the bar names, streets, dishes, or prices correspond to Almagro, Ciudad Real. NONE of it can be used for a Spanish heritage town entry without inventing or misattributing facts.

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