Cervantes has an important link with the city of Seville, where he had a more or less fixed residence between 1587 and 1601. It is said that it is in the Royal Prison of our city where the adventures of Don Quixote began…
At the age of 40, Cervantes settled in the Kingdom of Seville to act as ¨comisario real de abastos¨, collecting provisions – mainly wheat, barley and oil – for the Invincible Navy and the fleets of the Indies.
Previously, between 1556 and 1566 he had a stay in our city, attending classes at the Jesuit school. He was also an assiduous spectator of the representations of the popular Lope de Rueda, as he recalled later in the prologue to the edition of his own comedies.
In his second stay , he arrives after long avatars, adventures and experiences :.
Firstly had travelled part of Italy in the service of the future Cardinal Acquaviva.
Then participates as a soldier in the famous Battle of Lepanto (1571), where he is crippled in his left hand, which is not one-armed, as is commonly believed.
In addition, he was held captive in Algiers between 1575 and 1580, with four ingenious attempts to escape until his release by the Trinitarian friars.
After all these adventures, he arrives in Seville, one of the most cosmopolitan cities in Europe thanks to the monopoly of trade with the West Indies. It is a bustling and changing city, with an infinite number of comedy halls and one of the most important publishing industries. In 1511 the first printing press was established in Pajaritos Street, some 70 years after its invention by Gutenberg in Germany.
Imprisoned in Seville
In 1597, he entered the Royal Prison of Seville, where criminals of all categories were held, accused of appropriating public money.
After that, his knowledge of thugs and rogues in Seville had an outstanding result in his writing. His stay behind bars took place in common dormitories. At the end of 1597 Cervantes regained his freedom. The prison could have been the place where the first sketches of Don Quixote were drawn up, and undoubtedly of his Exemplary Novels. The places mentioned in these are marked with 17 ceramic plaques in different squares of the city.
When the black plague threatened Andalusia in the summer of 1600, Cervantes left for Toledo. It was his farewell to Andalusia.
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