If in his previous essay work, ‘The other lives of Don Quijote’, revealed the place of La Mancha and the real characters that inspired the author of the author of the Quixotenow Francisco Javier Escudero Buendía (Madrid, 1969)in his new research, he sows the doubt that the Cervantes who have painted us over the centuries were really the one who wrote the most universal work of Spanish literature.
That is one of the ideas that this distinguished and student of the topic slides in his new book, ‘That was not in my book by Miguel de Cervantes’ (Almuzara, 2025), whose pages immerse us in the clearings of a man who lived and died in the ambiguity of which there is very little documentation, but many secrets and legends around his figure. But, calm, as he says, «there is no doubt that the author of The Quijote It is none other than Miguel de Cervantes Saavedraborn in Alcalá de Henares «.
To sustain the main hypotheses of his argument, the author is based on the theories of the Doctor in Romanesque and Professor of Spanish Literature at the Complutense University of Madridin addition to Cervantista, Andrés Amorós. In the opinion of this teacher of teachers, «there is a huge distance between what we are told about Cervantes, who was a simple soldier, poor, imprisoned, convert and probably a chef, and what is read in The Quijotewhich is typical of a great humanist with long hours of study «.
Therefore, according to Escudero, «we must review and resent his figure, and consider that he descended from Cordoba and Alcalaínos knights, that he was not so poor and that he had to have an education with a very solid preceptor, although we do not know where and when. Everything we know about his education, in Córdoba, Galicia or Seville, has been extracted from his works, that is, that it is fiction, not documents ».
In his task to unmask the true Cervantes, he invites the reader to accompany him in this adventure, although he gives in the text some brushstrokes of the profile of the man we face. «Seeing his family and comparing it to the friends with whom he moved throughout his life, we can extract a series of characters: it was Hidalgo-Caballero, Judeoconverso, soldier, Catholic-Contorrheformist and politically did not agree with King Felipe II for abandoning Africa by Portugal«, He says.
The researcher deepens even more in his figure and summarizes his professional facet as follows: «He changed every decade of a vital project, and his illusion for ten years was to be a corregidor or accountant in America. So much that he tried several times. The rest of his life was a broker who wrote. Private businesses are very important both in their life, as in their literature, and all their Toledo, Genoese, Sevillian and Portuguese friends alternated poetry with economy. There was no one without the other ».
With a trajectory of more than thirty years investigating and working in the archives, Escudero is a specialist in military orders and knows the world of nobles well, something that leads him to ensure that Cervantes “was not a great nobleman, a high military position or the monarchy with his own noble archive.” For this reason, he emphasizes, there is some documentation that speaks of him, but concentrated in a few places and only in the stages that he had public positions, which leads him to think that “it was a medium rural nobility to pass.”
Of course, he points out that «it must have been a reflexive man, dedicated to the study and little given to the conflict, against most of the rural and medium -sized nobles of the time, who were quite raised and used to have problems, from murders to fights, divorce and pending debts. But that is not his case, which left all those scenes for his novels ».
In fact, as he remembers, the lawsuit that has given us more personal information about him is the Death of the Knight of Santiago Navarro Gaspar de Ezpeleta in front of its houses in Valladolidand they put him in jail as a suspect, when he was more or less accidentally there. “The three times that passed through jail was due to local conflicts and accidental actions, which left little written mark,”
Another of the handicap to know something more in the life of Cervantes is that, apart from his daughter, he had no more offspring. “If there had been more grandchildren,” says, “they would have made Hidalguía files, gentlemen, requests for convents, and they would have told us things about their grandparents, as happened with many other of their neighbors and contemporaries.”
What is clear, as for his professional facet, is that Cervantes was better known outside. “It is difficult to explain why, with the contacts he had in captivity, he did not go further, to be a corregidor like his grandfather or, at least, to enter a position of secretary in the court,” says Escudero. And, as regards his recognition as a writer, he believes that he also did not occur for being “a very different author, advanced to his time”, something that made it impossible to enter the distinguished courtly circles or have an important patron.
Even so, the author of this intriguing and revealing work believes that there are still many unknowns to solve: «We do not know where he was when he wrote The Quijote And we also have no document from Miguel de Cervantes de Alcalá in La Mancha «. Therefore, the true face of this character, perhaps one of the most important in the history of Spain, remains unveiled at all and its legacy seems to be as full of fictions as the work that immortalized him.
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