In Puerto Lápice -give me the secret, please, so that the residents of Argamasilla de Alba do not know- it is supposed that it was where Miguel de Cervantes placed the first episode of the wanderings of his immortal knight, Don Quixote de la Mancha and until it is quite possible that the inn that bears his name, was the one where he also began his eternal escapades through the picturesque and varied geography of a peninsula, by the blood of whose children he runs, like the different kinds of strains, blood of a thousand and one different towns.

It is difficult, for the traveler who leaves the capital with the intention of going to those mysterious mountains of Andalusia, to pass by and not stop in this place, which still preserves the typical constitution of the old inns and inns of the roads, which and so many stories suggested men of letters with more status and ingenuity than me.

The Sale of Don Quixote, then, located in the heart of Puerto Lápice -or Puerto Lapiche, as it was also known in the days when the exalted writer and journalist Azorín made his chronicles for the newspaper ABC- in front of a church that it still preserves some elements of its ancient Romanesque-Mudejar constitution, it is a place for meeting and also for remembrance.

A place, where to make a stop on the road and let yourself be enchanted by feats and situations of some times, that perhaps were not better, but that deserve the benefit of the doubt, if we consider that they had the charm of the adventure, the acute sense of the trip and a good dose of that pepper of the soul, which in my modest opinion, it does not stop being the romanticism.

This does not mean, however, that they are still very far from the time when Cervantes placed the wanderings of our immortal knight-errant, Don Quixote de la Mancha, follow his route or at least stop at some related or significant point of it, do not suppose, for the modern traveler, an opportunity to ingratiate himself with picturesque events, which illustrate, as a metaphorical cicerone, one or a few displacements, which in other circumstances would result, possibly, from an inconsequential banality, once almost all of the old ones have been demolished mills, that our good gentleman, without a doubt, of a sharper look than the others, took for giants.

Because, with or without windmills; dead, even in memory, the Don Quixotes and the Dulcineas of yesteryear; dead even the insular descendants of the Good Judgment-sorry, I meant the Good Sancho-and also died-God willing to let him rest once and for all-he who gave birth to all of them, freeing them from the inclusion of his Imagination, Don Miguel de Cervantes, what does not stop being true, is that, for those who want to know La Mancha, there is no better place to start doing it, than this one, ours, its Puerto Lápice.

And if that claim does not seem enough, take good note of it, that until recent times I still recited it with uncontainable pride, a manchega of superior quality, my Mother:

'To La Mancha, there is a lot of wine, a lot of bread, a lot of oil and a lot of bacon.
And if you go to La Mancha, do not get upset, because you go to the land of Don Quixote. '

May you Soak well and the spirit of Don Quixote see it.

WARNING: Both the text and the accompanying photographs are my exclusive intellectual property.