Judging by Cervantes' serious gaze with which his portrait stares back at beholders, 16th century traveller Miguel de Cervantes would not have stood for any nonsense on the matter of taxation. New research reveals though that he was rather fond of being a tourist, for just like his most famous creations Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, Cervantes embarked on an epic journey around Andalucía.
Long-faced, his chin beard encircled by a starched ruff, Cervantes’ portraits shows a serious character with blonde whiskers and disapproving mouth. The new research links the erstwhile tax inspector and famous author with no fewer than 28 towns and cities in Andalucía, proving that the region was a popular tourist hot spot even then. Researches base their findings on letters Cervantes sent from various points in Andalucía in the 1590’s to document his journey.
Cervantes took in Alora and Ecija, before venturing on to Teba and Velez-Malaga and the very southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula. Don Quixote may have rambled through Spain quite aimlessly, but his creator Cervantes travelled with a purpose. He was a taxman by profession and knocked on tardy debtors’ doors to collect overdue taxes.
All work and no play was not his philosophy though, and Cervantes is known to have spent some quality leisure time at the Alhambra in the city of Granada.
Traversing Andalucía in 1590 was no Child’s Play
Cervantes’ travels are the centrepiece of a new exhibition at the National Library in Madrid. He wrote about his stay at destinations like Almanzora, Alora, Arahal, Baeza, Baza, Carmona, Castro del Rio, Ecija, Estepa, Granada, Guadix, Jaen, La Puebla de Cazalla, Lopera, Malaga, Marchena, Medina Sidonia, Montilla, Moron de la Frontera, Motril, Palma del Condado, Paradas, Ronda, Sevilla, Teba, Ubeda, Utera and Velez-Malaga, giving us a fascinating insight into what life was like then in the region and what he thought of his fellow countrymen- and women.
He completed his travels at a time when few road maps existed anywhere in the world and the Atlas had scarcely been invented. Cartographer and map maker extraordinaire Gerardus Mercator, who is responsible for the coining of the term “Atlas” used for a collection of maps, didn’t publish his revised collection of maps until 1595. Cervantes would have had to rely largely on local geographical knowledge, probably gathered at every tavern or roadside inn he stayed at.
When he stopped off in Medina Sidonia, now a small town on the main pueblos blancos tourist trail, would Cervantes have had problems persuading guards watching the gates that allowed access behind the town’s fortified walls that he was on legitimate business for Spain’s rulers? Would Cervantes had led his donkey or mule across the El Tajo Gorge at Ronda and crossed himself when he peered down the sides of the Puente de San Miguel, the town’s oldest bridge? And, when he gazed at the Mediterranean Sea, would he have worried about attacks by Barbary pirates?
Mapping the World of Cervantes
Maps at that time were not reliable; it was easy to get lost. Often based on hearsay rather than actual fact, with distances not measured but merely guessed at, road maps left a lot to be desired – as did road safety, for there were bandits, if not dragons to be reckoned with.
Maps like the “universal chart” made by Portuguese-born navigator and cartographer Diogo Ribeiro were scientifically fairly accurate, but they were rather selective in what they showed. Ribeiro’s 1529 map may show “Hispaniola” and its major settlements, but the whole map was tinged with the desire to please Spain’s Habsburg rulers, who wanted the world to acknowledge their claim to the Moluccas Islands, a major natural source for the lucrative spice-trade at the time.
Spanish rulers paid Portuguese mapmakers to manipulate geographical reality and show the Maluccas in the Spanish-ruled hemisphere, not in the Portuguese one, as they would have been discovered to be during Ferdinand Magellan’s first-known global circumnavigation (1519 to 1522).
Printed maps were also very expensive, and huge, so a nuisance to carry around. City maps were gradually coming into use, at least ever since cartographer Jacopo De’ Barbari and German publisher Anton Kolb had produced their amazing map of Venice in 1500 and German goldsmith and cartographer Jörg Seld had produced his map of Augsburg in 1521, the very first map in history of a northern European city.
Cervantes probably relied on the observations his predecessors had made during previous debt-collecting excursions, rather than cart around scrolled up maps of every place he was due to visit. The Cervantes Room at the National Library is located on the second floor of the South Wing. It is open from Mondays to Fridays from 9.00 am to 7.30 pm and closed on Satrudays during the summer months (until 15th September).