"There are two believings in Alcázar de San Juan that no one will be able to withdraw from the
memory of this town. The first one is the idea that the origin of this place goes back to
ancient times. The second is the certainty of being the real birth place of Miguel de Cervantes
Saavedra, the author of The Quixote. Both believings have suffered a hard censorship several
times in the past.
A member of the Academy of History and a nose and throat specialist by the name Dr. Laina,
used to visit oftenly Alcázar and wrote in 1947, in a review of Tomelloso called Albores de
Espíritu, an article entitled La Leyenda Embustera (the lying legend). In that article
he wrote about the Régulo Turro, Alces, the eight towers and Sempronio Graco saying that
if the origin of Alcázar went back to 1291. date when it was founded by the Orden Militar
of San Juan, then all previous references to Alcázar are part of a lying Legend.
It was worthless to argue that the emblem of Alcázar, made in 1292, refers to an existing
town reconquered by the christians, that the Carta Puebla given by the Orden of San Juan
in 1231 said: "To you, the Council of Alcázar", that the 362 inhabitants of the place
mentioned in the Carta Puebla lived in Alcázar and did not come from the neighboring
town of Consuegra since according to the Carta Puebla it was impossible that the more
than one thousand people that populated the villages of the Priorato by that time could
come from Consuegra, and above all things that the church of Santa María was already
founded in 1226.
The discovering of some roman mosaics in 1953 suggested the following comment to Sr. San
Valero Aparisi, professor of Ancient History in charge of the archeological works: Although
all the historicians, roman or contemporary thought just in the opposite direction...
Although the general current among the historicians went against the existence of a roman
period in Alcázar's history, those mosaics proved the existence of Alcázar in roman times.
Therefore there cannot be a Lying Legend any more.
In 1748, Don Blas Antonio Nasarre y Férriz1 wrote the
following in the birth certificate of Cervantes issued by the church of Santa María de
Alcázar: This person was the author of Don Quixote. Yet in 1681, the articled clerk of a
lawyer who lived in times of Cervantes used to say pointing to the house of the square of
La Rubia del Rosquero: Whenever we passed by this place the Lawyer Quintanar told me
that one was the house where Miguel de Cervantes was born.
The problem of Cervantes' origin became after that into a tough matter. Some experts believed
that the Cervantes from Alcázar, in the times of the Lepanto Battle, was in the age of
a child, more concerned about gathering nests and that type of things than about fighting
as a soldier. Those very experts also thought that the baptism certificate of Cervantes
was forged, that Nasarre was not well documented and many other things in the same
direction. However we believe that the Cervantes from Alcázar was old enough as to
be called the best disciple of Lope de Hoyos, that Menéndez Pelayo found the name of
Carvantes in the baptism certificate of Alcalá and that the very Astrana Marín could
hardly justify the surname Saavedra in the full name of the Cervantes from Alcalá.
All these questions were discussed for more than one century and in most cases the
conclusion agreed with those who believe that Cervantes was born in Alcázar de San Juan.
Therefore it was necessary to use different arguments. In my opinion History was the right
one since History can tell us why Cervantes does not want to remember the most important
place of La Mancha at that time: Alcázar de San Juan, the capital city of El Priorato de
la Orden Santísima, as Cervantes used to call it. Alcázar was in the middled of the road
that linked Argamasilla and Quintanar, in the middle of the road that linked El Puerto
with El Toboso, in the place where the rivers Amarguillo, Cigüela and Záncara gather
together, in the place where the river Guadiana disappears, appearing again in Los Ojos de
Arenas, just in the border of El Priorato. Alcázar was also crisscrossed by an important
road of La Mesta used by the cattle owners that went from the kingdoms of Andalucía to
those of Castilla.
Another researcher from Alcázar by the name Ángel Ligero Móstoles, based his research in
the characters of El Quijote. In my opinion no one can identify the fictitious characters
of a novel with those of the real life since even in the case they are akin, they always
could argue that all is pure coincidence. However it turns out that not all characters in
El Quijote are fictitious. In fact many of El Quijote's characters existed in the real life.
If the characters of El Quijote existed in the history of Alcázar de San Juan, someone
should give an explanation to so many coincidences. The most logical explanation is that
Cervantes knew those people and took their lifes with fictitious names to El Quijote.
The expert in the history of Alcázar Don Francisco Saludador Marino already notices
(Noria no. 4) that "it can be seen many times an alcazareño (someone born in Alcázar) side by
side with Cervantes.
Ángel Ligero Móstoles devoted many years of his life to find out how many people
from Alcázar appear with fictitious names in El Quijote. His work and dedication deserve
to be taken into consideration since it is the fruit of a serious research that opens
new horizons and gives and end to old discussions."
Manuel Rubio Herguido
