CASTILE. —
I. GEOGRAPHY
A historic region of Spain, corresponding in official usage to the present-day provinces of Santander, Burgos, Logroño, Soria, Segovia, Ávila, Palencia (Old Castile), Guadalajara, Madrid, Cuenca, Toledo, and Ciudad Real (New Castile), which together cover 122,334 sq. km., or about three-quarters of the entire country. This official designation, however, contrasts with both the proper historical and the geographical, or rather natural, usage, which includes, in whole or in part, the provinces of Palencia, Valladolid, and Albacete, while excluding the peripheral provinces of Logroño and Santander. The name Castile recalls the castles (Lat. *castella*) with which the Christian Reconquest organized, beginning in the 9th century and starting from the territory between the Pisuerga, Álava, and La Rioja, the gradual elimination of Arab rule from the peninsula; these advanced outposts often formed the nucleus of major urban centers and impressed upon the region one of its most distinctive characteristics.Castile, or rather the two Castiles, separated by the so-called Carpetanian Sierras (Gredos, Guadarrama, Gata), which stretch from the Portuguese border to the Ebro basin, essentially coincide with a high plateau (*meseta*) of considerable average altitude (650–800 m.), cut by the valleys that drain their waters into the Duero (Old Castile to the north, 50,000 sq. km.), the Tagus, the Guadiana, and the Júcar (New Castile to the south, 72,325 sq. km.), and bounded along its perimeter by more or less imposing mountain barriers (with the exception of the western side), which isolate it from the beneficial influence of the sea. The plateau has a typically continental climate, with harsh and long winters, short and very hot summers, and generally insufficient and poorly distributed rainfall relative to the needs of cultivation. The natural vocation of the land, covered predominantly by steppe or sparse woodland (maquis), is therefore pastoral and agricultural (though mostly extensive farming), and this has remained the case for centuries down to the present day. This is evidenced, if nothing else, by the sparse population density (39 inhabitants per sq. km. in Old Castile and 46 in New Castile; though the latter figure would remain below the former if Madrid’s population were not taken into account). The two Castiles today contain about 5,000,000 inhabitants, of whom two-thirds belong to Old Castile and one-third to New Castile. Among the cities, Burgos (79,000 inhabitants), Logroño (56,000), Segovia (18,000), Ávila (15,000), and Soria (10,000) stand out in Old Castile; while Toledo (35,000), Ciudad Real (33,000), Guadalajara (18,000), and Cuenca (16,000) are notable in New Castile.
The economy of the region rests on the raising of small livestock (sheep, with cattle only in certain mountainous districts of the peripheral sierras) and on cereal cultivation (grains, wine, oil); industry, for the most part small-scale, is confined to a few urban centers and produces goods of merely local interest.
The population, ethnically very homogeneous and well distinguished from the rest of the Spanish people—also thanks to its own dialect, which has become the national language—is almost entirely Catholic. The urban centers are often rich in religious monuments (cathedrals) among the most splendid and famous in the world.
II. HISTORY
In Roman times, Castile did not constitute a region with its own name; it was part of the Visigothic kingdom and, after the Arab invasion, of the Emirate of Córdoba. The Kingdom of Asturias, which was the original nucleus of the Christian reconquest of Spain, established garrisons there, and from the large number of castles that already existed in the 10th century, the region took its name of Castile and entered history as a county. Incorporated into the Kingdom of Navarre, it re-emerged in the second third of the 11th century as an independent kingdom, and with its rigid feudal organization, which had been established from the 9th century onward, it was able to protect the faith and social industriousness of its farmers, merchants, and monks against the Islamic world. At the same time, it demonstrated great power of expansion and attraction toward the other territories of the Iberian Peninsula; it soon absorbed the Kingdom of León, giving rise to the Kingdom of Castile and León. Exploiting its original geographical position and the progress achieved through the Reconquest, it eventually occupied the entire geo-political core of the two plateaus, upper and lower; then, during the 12th century, Castile extended its borders even further southward, occupying the region that would become known as New Castile. The subsequent stages of the struggle against Islam are marked by the fall of Cádiz (1133), Córdoba (1236), and Seville (1247); and in the same 13th century, King Ferdinand the Saint definitively fused Castile and León, occupied the entire Andalusia, and extended the name of Castile to all the newly conquered territories. In this way, the two kingdoms of Castile and Aragon constituted, in the late Middle Ages, the vital force of resurgent Spain, until their definitive union was gradually prepared through the marriage of the Aragonese Ferdinand to the Castilian Isabella. The union remained merely personal during their lifetimes and was completed with the absorption of Navarre and the conquest of the Muslim Kingdom of Granada (1492); but it became complete when their grandson Charles (I in Spain and V in Germany) united in his hands the two kingdoms and the overseas lands that properly belonged to Castile.During the Austrian and Bourbon dynasties established in Spain, Castile, though no longer having its own political identity since it was incorporated into Spain, remained at the center of Spanish politics; the Council of Castile was the body that organized and directed the entire Spanish domain. Castilian became the national literary language of Spain, of Cervantes and Calderón de la Barca, of St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa, of the great missionaries and great politicians of the 16th century; a language that from then on became the official language of nearly all of Central and South America.