DON QUIXOTE: ALIVE AND WELL IN GUANAJUATO (MEXICO)!

Report from EL PAÍS, 30 November 2005 (Europe edition, p. 42 – http://www.elpais.es/articulo/elpporgen/20051130elpepiage_2/Tes – ‘Que no se lleven el Quijote’ – ‘Don’t take Don Quixote away’): this article describes the enormous enthusiasm around the figure of Miguel de Cervantes which exists in the Mexican city of Guanajuato, which houses – thanks to an act of homage to Mexico’s generosity towards the Spanish Republican exiles from the Franco regime – the vast collection of Cervantes memorabilia handed down by the benefactor Eulalio Ferrer Rodríguez (1921- ). According to EL PAÍS, this collection includes ‘the most remarkable collection of Quixote images that anyone could imagine’. The report states that Guanajuato may be fairly be considered ‘the place most devoted to Cervantes of anywhere in the world’, adding that there are inhabitants who literally believe that ‘Cervantes’ character lived among them, and even that he is buried there’. I pass on all this as further evidence, were it needed, of the tremendous affection which continues to attach to the person and the work of the author of ‘Don Quixote’ throughout the Spanish-speaking world: the Man of la Mancha remains to this day the most emblematic and universal embodiment of that *utopian vision* which has always been an integral part of the Hispanic consciousness.

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