What is La Garganta? The Duke of Westminster's hunting grounds in southern Spain, visited by the British royal family for decades.

Ever since the news broke that Queen Camilla recently went on vacation, there has been a lot of talk about what she might have been doing during her trip and where she was. Fortunately, Spanish journalist Marisa Martin Blazquez claims to know the answer to these questions: queen Camilla was quail hunting, of course! On the Spanish TV program TardeAR, she told host Ana Rosa Quintana that Camilla spent her vacation at a farm that fits the description of La Garganta, a huge hunting ground in the Sierra Morena highlands, in the province of Ciudad Real, near the border between Andalusia and Castile-La Mancha.

What is La Garganta?

It is a huge estate surrounded by 15,000 hectares of land, which is one and a half times the size of the entire city of Barcelona. The estate has its own helipad, train station, gas station, and dozens of employees, including an army of private security guards.

For several decades now, La Garganta has served as a gated residence for British royalty. The estate was leased to the 6th Duke of Westminster, the late Gerald Cavendish Grosvenor, in the early 2000s, and upon his death was taken over by his son, Hugh. The estate had previously belonged to the Duke of Bavaria, Franz von Bavaria.

Since it became the property of the British royal family, La Garganta has gained a reputation for being the venue for the family's most unbridled parties. In 2005, brothers Prince William and Harry, then in their early twenties, hosted a deer, boar and quail hunt for their close friends, followed by a raucous whiskey party.

Among other things, La Garganta is located next to the Valle de Alcudia Nature Reserve and can be said to be a natural paradise of sorts. The hilly and densely vegetated area is inhabited by a variety of Iberian herbivores, including chamois, wild boar and mountain sheep, and the occasional steppe lynx or imperial eagle has been reported.