The Road from Santiago

  Another day on the road. It bypasses Peralveche. Maybe we should have visited, but we didn’t. We are still in Castilla-La Mancha. Let us do some comparisons. Castilla-La Mancha has a population of 2,104,433 people. That makes it 9th most populace province in Spain.  If it was a country   This makes it about the same size as Lesotho and Slovenia. The total area is 79,463km2 - the third in Spain.  That makes it a smidgeon larger than Czechia and a smidgeon smaller than Scotland. The GDP is 55.560 billion euros. This makes it about the same as Cameroon or Jordan. The GDP per capita is 26,134 euros. This is about the same as Malta, a little less than Italy and a little more than Slovenia.  Tomorrow, as they say, is another day and a day in Castilla-La Mancha is roughly equal to those in other places.  Actually, come to think about it, it is on the same meridian line as Brittany, Cornwall, West Wales, east Morocco, Mali, Burkina Faso and Ghana.

  Yes, there are some ancient Roman remains near the road but no details about what they are and so it is a ‘What do we know about La Mancha’ day. In terms of land, Castilla-La Mancha is the third biggest regions of Spain, accounting for 15.7% of the entire land. It is 9th in the case of population, with a little over 2 million inhabitants but on 16th in terms of the Human Development Index. Currently the Cortes of La Mancha is held by the PSOE - who have 17 seats, against the PP’s 12 and Vox’s 4. Albacete return 6 seats; Ciudad Real, 8; Cuenca, 5; Guadalajara, 5; and Toledo, 9.   Pablo Bellido is el presidente. He was born in April 1976 and was Mayor of Azuqueca de Henares from 2007 to 2015. Like many rural areas, the region grew in population till the 1950s. It fell, especially in the 60s and only began to stabilise in the late 1980s. Albacete is the greatest of its cities, Guadalajara second and Toledo third. Only 12 of the cities are above 30,000 people in number. Castilla...