Cervantes, provoking his readers
After all, Don Quixote has no real existence, but he is a phantasmic figure invented by Cervantes and meant to provoke the “desocupado lector.” Insinuating that the hero of his novel was a converso, Cervantes could be sure of an éclat, which would be discussed in the mentideros of Madrid and render him an author of renown. Considering the brilliant success of his Quixote, Cervantes was right: he got what he had aimed at. Under those conditions the fervent dispute declenched by Castro and Marcel Bataillon loses its irritating importance.
The problems, however, did not disappear, they only shifted from the imagined Don Quixote to his ingenious inventor himself. Recent biographical studies prove that Cervantes was an Old Christian. But exactly this fact causes hitherto unanswered questions. Why, being of cristiano viejo origin did he takes sides with the despised minorsity of the cristianos nuevos? Why the humiliation of Sancho Pansa in the episode of the fulling mills? And, last but not least, why the violent attacks on the cristianos viejos ridiculed in La elección de los alcaldes de Daganzo? These are fundamental problems that should be tackled, considering with utmost care the life and works of Cervantes: brain and body.