  The territory of La Mancha, its rural areas, and its landscapes suffer a kind
of atherosclerosis ("the silent killer") because of the increase in artificial
surfaces, the fragmentation of the countryside by various infrastructures, the
abandonment of small and medium-sized farms and the loss of agricultural,
material, and intangible heritage. At the same time, agricultural
industrialization hides, behind a supposed productive efficiency, the
deterioration of the quantitative and qualitative ecological status of surface
and groundwater bodies, and causes air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions,
loss of soil fertility, drainage and plowing of wetlands, forgetfulness of the
ancestral environmental heritage, of the emergence of uses and customs of
collective self-government and reduction of the adaptive capacity of
traditional agroecosystems. This work aims, firstly, to shed light on the true
costs of the main causes of environmental degradation in the territory of La
Mancha, while deteriorating relations between rural and urban areas and
determining the loss of territorial identity of La Mancha. the population. In
addition, drivers of change toward a more sustainable social, economic,
hydrological, environmental, and cultural production model are identified.
