Our most famous writer is really a stranger, even his birth date doubts his biographers.
It is believed that at age 19, already settled in Madrid, wanted to enter to serve as secretary of a noble house or a character closely linked to the court.
Episodes of the biography of Miguel de Cervantes: Youth | Lepanto | Captivity | In court | Old age and death.
View and download the special 'IV centenary of the death of Cervantes' in PDF.
Natural of Alcalá de Henares. Madrid, Toledo, Seville, Cordoba, Consuegra or Alcázar de San Juan were some of the places that the first biographers of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, back in the distant eighteenth century, defended that it was the place where the writer was born.
The lack of documentary evidence, the biased reading of literary references or the appearance of false baptismal records during those years allowed this fiction to be created in the biography of Cervantes. Everything ended in the mid-eighteenth century, when the real departure of Miguel de Cervantes was discovered in the baptism book of the church of Santa María la Mayor in Alcalá de Henares (as well as that of his brothers Andrés, Andrea and Luisa).
The discovery was made by Santiago Gómez Falcón, abbot of the Magisterial Church, during the months of June and July of 1752. On July 18 of that year he sent the transcript to Manuel Martínez Pingarrón, who communicated it to Mayans and Siscar, the first biographer of Cervantes (1738).
The disputes, deceptions and doubts of those years were solved by the biographers of the 18th century (Vicente de los Ríos and Juan Antonio Pellicer) and the 19th century (with Fernández de Navarrete at the head): Miguel de Cervantes was a native of Alcalá de Henares, where he was baptized on October 9, 1547.
The fact that on September 29 is celebrated the feast of San Miguel Arcángel has led to defend that this could be the exact day that Cervantes was born.
Miguel de Cervantes only lived his first years in Alcalá de Henares. In 1566, at the age of 19, we found him with his family in Madrid, where he studied with Professor Juan López de Hoyos, probably before in his private school, rather than in the General Study of the Villa. Your pretensions? Surely he wanted to enter to serve as secretary of some noble house or of some person very linked to the court, like Cardinal Espinosa.
This seems to prove the type of letter that dominates and that can be seen in the 11 autographs we have preserved: the canonical bastard, scribal own letter that would allow them to access a position linked to the administration or complex court system.
In 1569, Miguel de Cervantes, as indicated in the preliminaries of La Galatea (1585) and in documents of the time, is in Rome. Opportunity that will allow him to participate in the battle of Lepanto (1571). Begin to build a new life, a new future as a soldier.
