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.

Almagro is built around its Plaza Mayor, a long irregular rectangle whose arcades of Tuscan columns carry galleries now closed with glazing, which give the square its unmistakable look. The town owes its grandeur to the Order of Calatrava, which made it the residence of its Masters in the thirteenth century, and to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when wealthy families drawn by the fairs and the business of the Fuggers built palatial houses.

Opening off the square is the Corral de Comedias, a seventeenth-century open-air theatre courtyard, the only one of its kind in Spain to survive intact from that period. It was discovered in 1953, and theatre has shaped the town since: the Festival Internacional de Teatro Clásico is held every July, and the former Palacios Maestrales house the Museo Nacional de Artes Escénicas. Almagro is also a town of lace, displayed at the Museo Municipal de Encaje y Blonda.

Almagro joined Los Pueblos Más Bonitos de España in 2015. The label is awarded by a private association, not the state: a village applies and is audited against around 40 criteria, from how its historic buildings are conserved to the upkeep of its streets, and members are reviewed and can lose it. Almagro is one of 8 members in Castilla-La Mancha, out of 126 in Spain. See all heritage towns in Castilla-La Mancha.

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. NONE