Puntos de Interés
Culture
Casa Villalba
The city of Albacete has long based its economy on agriculture and livestock farming, as shown by the creation of its important fair, granted by Felipe V, which later became the current Albacete Fair.
This was due to the proliferation of agricultural and livestock farms scattered throughout the province.
Judging by its structure and distribution, the Casa Villalba was a self-sufficient estate, thanks to the animals and crops it owned.
Consultation of the documentary collection of the Provincial Archive of Albacete shows that in the mid-19th century there were 5 people living in the Villalba house. In the 1890 census there were 7 inhabitants and according to the 1893 tax census there were 3 pairs of mules for agricultural work. Pascual Madoz also mentions this farmhouse in his Geographical-Statistical-Historical Dictionary of 1850 as a hamlet in the province, within the jurisdiction of the courts of the district of Albacete. The 1920 tax register states that the building was 800 metres in size, surrounded by land belonging to the same property. All these data are a true reflection of the size and importance that this farmhouse had in the past: It now has more than 15 hectares of land of different types and different types of construction for agricultural, livestock and residential use that have undergone different reforms over time, despite which it maintains the original essence of the typical farmhouse of Albacete. All this makes Casa Villalba one of the best examples of traditional architecture of great cultural and ethnographic value that transports the traveller back in time.