Manzanares is a municipality of Spain located in the Province of Ciudad Real, Castilla-La Mancha. It had a population of 18,924 as of 2014. It is located near the Autovía A-4 (Autovia del Sur).

The Iglesia de la Asunción, the town's main church is dedicated to the Assumption of Mary.

The village of Llanos del Caudillo, established by the Instituto Nacional de Colonización in the 1950s and formerly depending from Manzanares, became a municipality in its own right in the 1990s.

The solar updraft tower (SUT) is a design concept for a renewable-energy power plant for generating electricity from low temperature solar heat. Sunshine heats the air beneath a very wide greenhouse-like roofed collector structure surrounding the central base of a very tall chimney tower. The resulting convection causes a hot air updraft in the tower by the chimney effect. This airflow drives wind turbines, placed in the chimney updraft or around the chimney base, to produce electricity.

As of mid 2018, although several prototype models have been built, no full-scale practical units are in operation. Scaled-up versions of demonstration models are planned to generate significant power. They may also allow development of other applications, such as to agriculture or horticulture, to water extraction or distillation, or to improvement of urban air pollution.

Commercial investment may have been discouraged by the high initial cost of building a very large novel structure, the large land area required and by the risk of investment. A few prototypes have recently[when?] been built, and projects are proposed for parts of Africa, the US and Australia.

In 2014, National Geographic published a popular update, including an interview with an informed engineering proponent. A solar updraft tower power plant can generate electricity from the low temperature atmospheric heat gradient between ground or surface level and structurally reachable altitude. Functional or mechanical feasibility is now less of an issue than capitalisation.

A comprehensive review of theoretical and experimental aspects of solar updraft tower power plant (SUTPP) development is available, recommending commercial development.