Its capital city is Toledo, and its most populated city is Albacete.

Castile-La Mancha was formerly grouped with the province of Madrid into New Castile ("Castilla la Nueva"), but with the advent of the modern Spanish system of semi-autonomous regions ("las autonomías"), it was separated due to great demographic disparity between the capital and the remaining New-Castilian provinces.

It is mostly in this region where the story of the famous Spanish novel Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes is situated. Although La Mancha is a windswept, battered plateau ("manxa" means parched earth in Arabic; hence La Mancha is not definitively related to the Spanish word "mancha", or stain, which is derived from Latin "macula") it remains a symbol of the Spanish culture with its sunflowers, mushrooms, oliveyards, windmills, Manchego cheese, and Don Quixote.