Don Quijote on YouTube!

The Royal Spanish Academy has been working in conjunction YouTube to start a global reading of the famous Spanish works of Miguel de Cervantes.

The work that will be referenced will be the popular 2004 version or the fourth centenary edition and over two thousand parts of the book will be distributed amongst those who have expressed interest in reading the famous Spanish book for the project.

Cervantes was born in Alcalá de Henares on 29 September, 1547, the fourth of seven children to Rodrigo de Cervantes and Leonor de Cortinas. It is believed that he studied with the Jesuits in one of the Andalusian cities, Cordoba or Seville and as an adolescent lived in various Spanish cities including Madrid and Seville.

At the age of twenty he abandoned his homeland for Rome, Italy before joining the Spanish Armada where his left hand was irreparably injured in the 1571 Battle of Lepanto, leading to his nickname, the “cripple of Lepanto”.

Upon his return to Spain in 1575, his ship was captured and taken to Algiers by Barbary pirates where he remained a captive for 5 years until the ransom was paid and he eventually landed at Denia (Valencia).

A short time later he was married in Toledo and writing fruitless works. He moved south to Seville where he was again imprisoned, this time for irregularities in his account keeping of Navy taxes. Upon release he headed north to Valladolid.

Back writing again, it is his works between 1590 and 1612 which caught the attention of the public. 1613 saw the release of “Novelas ejemplares” containing a number of infamous tales, but it was in 1605 when the first part of his story “The Ingenious Hidalgo don Quijote of La Mancha” was released that he found instant success. The second part of the story followed a decade later, although nowadays both parts have been combined as the one story.

In April 1616, Cervantes caught dropsy and died days later.

Ver fuente de la noticia en español: “El Quijote” llega a Youtube