Viajeros estadounidenses en La Mancha

Abstract

Throughout history travel writings have been interesting and suggestive thanks to the information they provide, the reference to specific places, and the way of perceiving reality based on who has written them, among other considerations. The discussed topics usually refer to the social life and customs of the place that has been visited, and cities are described, highlighting their most striking aspects. However, we cannot forget that the writings tend to respond to certain social, cultural, economic and political demands of the historical moment in which they are written. In this paper we intend to briefly outline some examples of travel writings that American travellers have written about La Mancha in general and Valdepeñas in particular. We will focus our study on the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth, dealing with stories and commentaries about people, the poverty of the people from La Mancha, bad communications, and many other aspects that are reflected in the retina of the traveller, then passed through the sieve of the critical observation before being expressed on paper.