Villamalea
Albacete · Castilla–La Mancha
DO Manchuela4.083inhabitants
1516first mention
1946wine documented
A municipality in the Albacete part of La Manchuela and home of the Regulatory Council of the DO Manchuela. It began as the hamlet of San Juan de Villamalea, belonging to the town of Jorquera, whose settlement was regulated by the 1516 agreement with the Marquis of Villena, which obliged the farmers to plant vines.
First mention: Agreement of 29 April 1516 between the representatives of Diego López Pacheco, 2nd Marquis of Villena, and the farmers of the hamlet of “San Juan de Villamalea”, a dependency of Jorquera (account by M. Collado Álbez, Town Council).
The legend
documented 1946 (formal founding of the cooperative) and 1953 (first bodega of its own); DO Manchuela 2004The bodega the growers won from the wine merchants
In the late 1940s the small growers of Villamalea had to sell their grapes to the town’s bodega owners, who paid little and, according to the testimonies, cheated on the weighing. The San Antonio Abad cooperative, created in 1946 on official initiative, existed barely on paper until a group of farmers rented a small bodega and made their own wine. Its success drew in more members; they renewed the board and in 1953 built, without any subsidies, the first cooperative bodega. The agronomist Pascual Carrión, once the father of the Republican agrarian reform, took part in its construction. Under Franco that wine cooperative was also a space for neighbourhood and political organisation, and it turned Villamalea into a town of cooperatives.
Alive today: Villamalea is home to the Regulatory Council of the DO Manchuela (Avda. San Agustín, 9), a denomination recognised in 2004 and centred on the bobal grape between the Júcar and Cabriel rivers. The wine cooperative movement born in the 1940s is still the backbone of the town’s economy, led by the San Antonio Abad cooperative (SAAC).
Wineries and their wines
SAAC Cooperativa San Antonio Abad · since 1946
Wine towns nearby