Scientific equipment from a year ago sought the remains of Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don Quixote and figure of world literature, is “convinced” to have found in the crypt of a Madrid convent where they were buried almost four centuries.
Born in 1547 in the university city of Alcalá de Henares near Madrid, Cervantes lived his last years in the heart of the Spanish capital. According to historical documents, was buried there on April 23, 1616 in the church of the convent of Discalced Trinitarians.
However, with the passage of time and reforms in the convent the trail of his burial, fall into oblivion lost until this search began in March 2014.
Since then, the team found and deciphered forgotten historical documents, probed with an georradar the floor of the convent where religious still live and drilled a tiny subterrána way to a crypt in the church.
Among the bones found there are small fragments that just a few days ago could be identified as belonging to a group of about 15 people buried in the seventeenth century convent in another location and transferred later. Among them, according to the documents, was Cervantes, announced Monday anthropologists responsible for the search, at a packed press conference.
“In light of all the information generated in For historical, archaeological and anthropological nature, it is possible to consider that among the fragments localized reduction in the floor of the crypt of the present church of the Trinity are some belonging to Miguel de Cervantes, “said Spanish forensic anthropologist Francisco Etxeberría, team coordinator.
“There are many coincidences and no discrepancies” added Etxeberría, international expert who had participated in the autopsy of Chilean President Salvador Allende, died during the coup of Augusto Pinochet in September 1973.
However, due to the poor condition of the bones and the fact that they were all mixed, these could not be individualized, explained the archaeologist Almudena García-Rubio. “We are not certain,” admitted Etxeberría, “so we are cautious. And while we are convinced that in these fragments some Cervantes “.
Life and Death of a genius
Cervantes died end of April 1616 in Madrid, in his home in the present streets Leon and Cervantes, in the neighborhood Austria in the Spanish capital.
The last will of the writer was to be buried in the nearby convent of Discalced Trinitarians. The reason for this desire was to thank the intervention of the friars of the Order of Trinitarians when the writer was held captive five years in the city of Algiers.
During these years as a prisoner of Turks Cervantes with his brother Rodrigo, also captured, tried four times to escape. And four times the attempt ended in failure, with consequent punishment by their captors.
For example, once he was sentenced to receive two thousand shovels, but ultimately not He fulfilled that torture. But sometimes the Turkish governor chained and submitted sexually. In this sense, Cervantes got to become your favorite and why survived.
In 1580, arrived in Algiers a Trinidadian parents who intervened to rescue Cervantes. The king asked five hundred crowns of gold, but had only three hundred religious. After making negotiations with several powerful men in the city to get the required sum, the Trinitarians got free the brothers.
Miguel was not yet the writer that marked the destiny of the novel and the Spanish language universal level, becoming indivisible part of the Western canon. In Spain wrote Don Quixote , his masterpiece, published in two parts in 1605 and 1615.
In a gesture of thanks, he wanted his bones and his wife rest in the convent where now resurface thanks to forensic work
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