News, May 2005

23rd April, '05 - Cervantes' Day and Don Quixote is 400 years old!

23rd April is a big day in Spain for culture and more so this year than any. It is Cervantes' official birthday -actually the anniversary of his death in 1616. This year is also the 400th anniversary of the publication of Don Quijote (part 1). In addition, it is St. George's Day, a public holiday in several regions and cities. All over Spain it is also known as 'The Day of the Book'

Interestingly, 'The day of the book' is actually the coincidence of the anniversary of Cervantes' death and Shakespeare's birthday (1564) and... incredibly, both men died the same day in 1616! Thus two of the world's greatest writers lived contemporaneously in countries opposed ideologically and at war much of their lives.

More about Don Quijote's anniversary in another article in this section. Cervantes' real birthday was 29th September, 1547. Cervantes was one of the soldiers who fought Spain's great naval victory against the Turks, Lepanto, in 1571. The second part of Don Quijote was published in 1615.

St. George's Day is celebrated in Catalonia and Castilla y León. In Catalonia a tradition is for a man to give a red rose to his beloved. In the light of the recent change in the marriage law this might take on new light, but it remains a very romantic thing to do. An alternative, of course, is to give a book, a practice acceptable all over Spain.

Evangelicals, naturally, love the idea of celebrating the day of THE BOOK, the book of books, the Bible. Many evangelical book shops also give discounts on book sales this week.

In addition, this year evangelical writer and radio/TV personality Cesar Vidal has published a new book on the subject of the Bible passages found in Cervantes' famous novel, which made it through the censorship of the Spanish Inquisition at a time when culture and especially books were regarded as highly dangerous. The power of print in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries was, of course, similar to the power of the broadcast media and Internet today. It was a novelty for the average person to be able to see a book at all, much less be able to read it and the ideas that came, even ones dating from centuries earlier, were all new to most. But at the time Don Quijote was published, the Inquisition was doing its best to stamp out all signs of cultural interest among the people of Spain. Recently it has been commented that even without the Inquisition, most Spaniards would ave banded together to rid themselves of outside influence and ideas. Could this be true, or is this an opinion that reflects rather the attitude of Spaniards in the early 21st century to any innovation not apparently endorsed by the government's channels of information?