The Road from Santiago

  It is a day of straight roads and open roads and roads uncluttered by cafes, museums or small but reviewed obelisks.  Better do five things…. Spain’s underground women’s football team got going in 1970 with Rafael Muga and others. The first official game was on 5th February 1983, where Spain lost 1-0 to Portugal at A Guarda, Galicia. The Dacia Sandero is the best-selling car in Spain with more than 38,500 sold in 2025. The N-340 National Road is the longest road in Spain, going 1,248km from Cadiz to Barcelona. It follows a lot of the Roman Via Augusta.  Wiki notes the two greatest disasters on it.  In 1978 the Los Alfaques disaster occurred on 11th July.  A tanker of liquefied propylene exploded near a campsite, killing 215 people.  The other was in 2001.  A Binter Mediterraneo flight crashed near Malaga, killing 4 of the 44 people on board. We’ve been up Spain’s highest peak - Teide on Tenerife.  The next is Mulhacen in the Sierra Nevada. ...

 Big  open spaces then two settlements in as many days.  We are going for Argamasila de Calatrava with spirit and alacrity.  What we said yesterday, you know, depopulation, resettlement in the 13th century, that stuff.  Same as today really. Spanish wiki says ‘D. José de Hosta, author of Chronicle of the Province of Ciudad Real (1865), stated  that the town had 2149 inhabitants, with 350 one- and two-story houses distributed around a fairly spacious square and twelve cobbled streets, though poorly maintained. The town hall was rebuilt in 1776 on the site of the former granary, which had served as a jail. The land within its municipal boundaries is flat, sandy, and dry, but it has some orchards irrigated by waterwheels, reaching slightly towards the Puertollano mountain range. The roads between towns are all cart tracks but poorly maintained. Among the crops grown are wheat, barley, rye, chickpeas, beans, legumes, wine, and some olive oil. Sheep, goats, cat...

  We are off to Puertollano - which is what happens when people spot a convenient gap in the hills to run road and railway transport through. 45,565 people lived here last year and it has been described as ‘the mining city’ and ‘the industrial beacon of La Mancha.’ This is a bit of a surprise - well, I wasn’t expecting a place of such size. It is August. The average temperature is 25 oC. That is about half a degree less than July but if you want rain, forget it. 6mm for the whole month. This region was depopulated during the advance of the Christian powers. The Order of Calatrava, a Castilian Military, got given the place - which is first mentioned in 1245.  Things were going reasonably - what with crops and livestock - when the Black Death swept through the place, leaving 13 families to carry the place on. In the 16th century Philip II gave the place a town charter - which spurred them on to develop a weaving industry and become a manufacturer of small jugs. Puertollano becam...

  We are following the valley, wherein the high speed train travels. The N420a becomes the N420 just outside the village of Retamar.  Well, to be exact, the road does weird things. The N420a goes through the place and the N420 is the bypass. We are going through the village because it is a great example of a really narrow route which you can just bet was crammed with angry lorry drivers before some some thoughtful soul built a bypass. It is crammed with old, small, town houses, and probably should be preserved as such. Our friend the GSH Dictionary has something to say about the place.  ‘ It has 40 houses in poor condition and without order, and a church (Santa Maria de las Nieves), annexed to the parish of Almodóvar and served by a lieutenant: a quarter of a league to the south are the ruins of Retamal, which was another hamlet with the same dependencies; but having disappeared, the names of the two are generally confused, although these ruins are also called Casas de G...