CASTILLA LA MANCHA DAY

ON 31st MAY 1983 THE FIRST REGIONAL COURTS BEGAN THEIR BEGINNING, FOR THAT REASON EVERY 31st MAY IS CELEBRATED THE DAY OF CASTILLA LA MANCHA

On 31 May 1983, the first Cortes of Castilla-La Mancha were constituted in the church of San Pedro Mártir in Toledo, a few weeks after the first regional elections had been held and after nearly eight years of negotiations between politicians of all colours;

ORIGINS OF CASTILLA LA MANCHA DAY

The first Cortes was the end of a process that had begun to take shape some years earlier; On 26 April 1976 in Mota del Cuervo a group of parliamentary representatives from Albacete, Ciudad Real, Cuenca, Guadalajara and Toledo met to lay the foundations for the future autonomous community of Castilla-La Mancha.

The desire to stand up to the rest of the historical communities, to have their own voice and not lose the opportunity to grow, expand and develop, motivated a series of politicians and the entire citizenry to seize the opportunity to win their place on the new map of Spain; Albacete’s renunciation of Murcia paved the way for a path that materialised faster than expected; On 3 December 1981, a total of 158 future Castilian-La Mancha citizens, including senators and deputies for the five provinces, They finished drafting the regional Statute of Autonomy. It was adopted on 10 August 1982;

LOOKING AT THE KINGDOM OF CASTILLA AND THE MILITARY ORDERS

Symbols such as the flag or the coat of arms are basic socialising agents for the construction of a common identity; In the case of Castilla-La Mancha, it was also difficult to get these emblems off the ground;

However, the flag was the first symbol to be born; The Diario Oficial de Castilla-La Mancha of 20 October 1980, reports the Junta’s decision to adopt the design commissioned from the academics of History and Fine Arts;

On the piece of cloth attached to the pole, the coat of arms or banner of Castile, the ancient Kingdom to which all this land belonged and which is: the crimson red field, the castle of three towers of gold mazonadas of black (marked the stones) and clarified (the doors and sales) of blue. The second piece is white, in memory of the military orders of Calatrava, Santiago and San Juan, whose glorious militias conquered, organised and administered the land of La Mancha and whose banners were always white;

A flag which, however, has undergone more than one de facto modification over the last forty years; The colour is undoubtedly one of the most visible, as the crimson red of the regional statute has been replaced by the purples and pinks that now dress the vast majority of regional flags; From the flag was born the coat of arms, which was approved by law in 1983;

MANZANARES WILL BE THE CITY CHOSEN IN 2023 FOR THE CELEBRATION OF THE DAY OF CASTILLA LA MANCHA AND THE CULMINATION OF THE EVENTS FOR THE 40th ANNIVERSARY OF OUR STATUTE OF AUTONOMY;

August 2022 marked the 40th anniversary of the entry into force of Law 9/1982 of 10 August 1982 on the Statute of Autonomy of Castilla-La Mancha; The configuration of the pre-autonomous entity at the end of 1978 gave way, two years later, to the consolidation of the territory of Castilla-La Mancha as an Autonomous Community, under the provisions of article 143 of the constitutional text; The overwhelming majority with which the representatives of the citizens in town councils and provincial councils responded to the regional initiative, endorsed the work of the political groups present in the Assembly of Parliamentarians of Castilla-La Mancha, work crowned with the final approval of the text with which a “new” Community began its journey, but with a long historical journey behind it;

Today, forty years after those exciting times, Castilla-La Mancha looks forward to a future full of challenges with the strength that comes from a shared past and the goals to be achieved; A consolidated and united society, which four decades later, continues the journey started in 1982 with the satisfaction of having been able to live the most fruitful period of its history;

Forty years may be nothing in the course of several centuries, but they should be celebrated as they deserve to be celebrated, with the permanent vindication of a joyful reality with a long way to go: Castilla-La Mancha.