No one knows for sure what miracle was worked to cause a series of circumstances to become intertwined in this small town in a remote corner of the province of Ciudad Real to make it an attraction for art enthusiasts in general and lovers of literature in particular.
It probably had a lot to do with the fact that Villanueva de los Infantes has acted, and still acts, as the seat of the Campo de Montiel region, an administrative, economic and cultural hub in the 16th and 17th Centuries. As a result, a multitude of renowned figures have passed through the city over the centuries, contributing their inventiveness and work to create this monumental urban jewel that often surprises those arriving for the first time.
One name stands out among them, a person who left us his ingenuity in the form of intangible heritage for all time. This is Mr. Francisco de Quevedo y Villegas, who arrived with his sharp mind and worn body in the twilight of his life because of his condition as Lord of Torre de Juan Abad, a town near Villanueva de los Infantes, but mostly because of the suspicions that his sharp tongue and scathing pen had aroused in the Court of Madrid.
Thus, destiny had it that Mr. Francisco de Quevedo should expire in a cell in the Convent of Santo Domingo in Villanueva de los Infantes on 8 September 1645. This cell, which has been carefully preserved, can be seen today by all the visitors to the city. His remains were buried in the Parish Church of San Andrés, in the chapel of “Los Bustos”. There he remained buried for 150 years, until his bones were transferred to the common ossuary in the crypt of Saint Thomas. Hence the identity of the famous remains of Quevedo was lost until recently, when a team from the Universidad Complutense in Madrid recovered and identified a part of the remains of the author of “El Buscón” (The Scavenger), although the full skeleton could not be recovered due to the great deterioration thereof. Now, Quevedo again rests in the place where he was first buried, the crypt of “Los Bustos”.
Villanueva de los Infantes. Strangely enough, in this same city the famous Cervantes, who referred to this city as “the place of La Mancha” where Don Quixote was from, also came here. The adventures of Quixote take place mainly in La Mancha:
- Campo de Montiel: “cuando el famoso caballero Don Quijote de la Mancha... subió sobre su hermoso caballo Rocinante y comenzó a caminar por el antiguo y conocido Campo de Montiel...”
- Camino Real of Andalusia, which connected Toledo and Cordoba.
- In the Second Part, Don Quixote leaves La Mancha to head to Barcelona via Aragon, although only the Ebro River is cited.
Cervantes set this universal character in La Mancha (a land he knew quite well because of his constant journeys between the Court and Andalusia) as the expression of the knightly spirit existing in this land colonised mostly by knightly orders. Don Quixote was perfectly familiar with the code of chivalry: justice, fairness, loyalty, integrity, prudence, generosity, amiability… Thus it is easy to believe that Don Quixote de la Mancha had his raison d’être in this “tierra de caballeros” (land of knights).
A thorough study, “El Quijote como sistema de distancias/tiempos” (The Quixote as a distance/time system), carried out by specialists at the Universidad Complutense has determined that the “place of La Mancha” is Villanueva de los Infantes, the seat of Campo de Montiel, a historically and geographically well-defined region, through which the royal road of Madrid-Toledo-Granada passes. According to Cervantes “cuando el famoso caballero Don Quijote de la Mancha... subió sobre su hermoso caballo Rocinante y comenzó a caminar por el antiguo y conocido Campo de Montiel...” Cervantes was a great fan of Campo de Montiel. He mentions it up to five times in the work, although there is no historical evidence that he went there often. When geographic distances are established, they meet in the geographic centre of Campo de Montiel. Through a careful reading of the work, these researchers were able to extract certain variables, such as the distances between villages stated in the novel or the time that Don Quixote took to travel from one place to another. One essential element was “the speed at which he rode his horse, Rocinante”. They reviewed all the proposals that gauged the number of leagues that can be travelled per day by horse. A normal amount would be to travel 50 kilometres per day. But Rocinante moved half as fast as a normal horse, as the novel tells us. Thus, analysing distances, times and speeds, they came to Villanueva de los Infantes. They solved the puzzle. The researchers had been looking for small towns or villages near El Toboso. They could not imagine that it was Villanueva de los Infantes, with a population of 6,300 inhabitants. In the end, it was neither a small village nor was it near El Toboso. Also included in the study are Argamasilla de Alba (the laudatory verses by the scholars of Argamasilla with which the first part ends lead one to assume that Don Quixote was from this town, and “El Quixote de Avellaneda” corroborates this) and Esquivias, because of its famous Cervantes tradition (he was married and spent several periods with his wife here. It is believed that Cervantes used his wife’s great-uncle, Alonso Quijada, who was a nobleman changed by reading chivalrous literature, as inspiration).
Thus, in the end, Cervantes’ prophecy, with premeditated vagueness, comes true, as it says in the prologue: “por dejar que todas las villas y lugares de La Mancha contendiesen entre sí por ahijársele y tenerle por suyo...”
