Argamasilla de Alba is a municipality in Ciudad Real (province), Castile-La Mancha, Spain. It has a population of 6,791. Cervantes refers to Argamasilla in a mocking way, no doubt because of its name ("argamasilla" means "mortar") at the end of Don Quijote Part I. (Argamasilla de Alba has never had academicians of any type, contrary to the joke found there.) According to local legend, not accepted by modern Cervantes scholars, Cervantes was held prisoner here and refers to the place in the prologue to Don Quixote, in which he when work was "engendered in a jail". (Modern Cervantes scholars believe this is a reference to Cervantes' well-documented imprisonment in the Cárcel Real of Seville.) The town tourist and cultural office is located in a rebuilt house, the "Casa de Medrano", which contains beneath the "Cave of Medrano", in which Cervantes' imprisonment allegedly took place. In the nineteenth century, Juan Eugenio Hartzenbusch had a printing press set up in the cave and printed there an edition of Don Quijote.