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He is one of the most highly acclaimed and multi-award-winning figures in current literature and one of the best known on the international literary scene. More info. Discover the surroundings Murcia Cartagena. Travel planner Save time and effort. How does he achieve such loyalty, loyalty being the hardest thing to achieve in life?
And I wasn't interested in him as the finished article but rather in when he began to become the Cid: the years of evolution, of exile; in short, when the legend begins.
Yes, possibly. There always have been. But the problem, in my opinion, is that our times don't deserve these men. When we speak of virtue in the Roman sense, namely, of nobility of spirit and an elegant attitude towards life, of personal dignity and courage, you realize that today's world is not interested in that, doesn't want it and even rejects it.
What's more, when the people of today come face to face with virtue, they mock it. Up against noble people who can't be matched, they ridicule them. The mediocre person tries to bring them down. And since they can't, they try mockery. Anyone can do it over the Internet, in characters, on TV Laughter is a powerful weapon The Cids, the personalities are there.
Human beings constantly produce geniuses, artists and creators, heroes and firefighters, wonderful people willing to die for many reasons. They're people willing to sacrifice themselves for what they believe in. That bothers some people. Do you think there's anyone left now who's willing to die for their country or an ideal? Actually, I don't think the Cid dies for an ideal. He had a code of allegiances and dignity. I mean, what I was interested in highlighting about the Cid is that it's not about a person who sets out to fight for an ideal.
He was doing it to put food on the table. He is not fighting first and foremost for the Reconquest which didn't as yet exist in Spain but rather because these were kingdoms where there was fighting between Moors and Christians. Besides that, he has no providential mission. All of that comes later. He had no religious or patriotic ideas, which is to say, he wasn't fighting for God or country. But despite his banishment, he continued to pledge allegiance and respect to King Alfonso VI.
Do you know why? Because when you have nothing, when you are an outcast, expelled from the bosom of society — whether you are a criminal or a mercenary — and the general codes with which society protects itself stop working, you need to have something to respect: you need a loyalty code between your people and something else.
Even marginalised people, even people who are moderately decent seek some kind of justification in order not to feel wretched. In your book The History of Spain, you wrote your version of it. Do you think so? Yes, of course, Spain is a very rough and rugged country divided up into plots and land parcels where, when a valley meets its neighbouring valley, they suspect each other.
We've always had that kind of geographical fragmentation. To that we have to add the Muslim invasion, religions, bad governments, etc. So Spain has a long history of discord, lack of unity, villainy and Cainism.
I've always said that Cain had a Spanish ID card. And when you analyze the history of Spain, it becomes clear that, with that lack of solidarity, it is difficult for us to do anything in unison. As soon as the pressure gives way, everything disintegrates. So, the best thing for a Spanish child is to make them travel, because if you leave them in their valley, in their village, they will never leave.
In Spain, any control over education has been lost. It's chaos. There are gaping holes in culture, the arts, etc.
There are seventeen different systems Translated from the Spanish by Shauna Devlin. This website uses cookies to manage authentication, navigation, and other functions. He has since then dedicated himself exclusively to writing and has to date produced about 16 novels, hundreds of articles in magazines, most notably "Semanal TV" and appeared on radio and TV interview shows.
He frequently appears at seminars, congresses and book fairs and has received numerous journalist awards from radio, TV and newspapers.
He lives in a village outside Madrid with his wife and daughter Carlota. Indeed, his daughter was in great part responsible for the first part of the "Alatriste" novels as she carried out quite a lot of the work of investigating historical documents relating to 17th Century Madrid. His novels have the common thread of being based on real historical times and that in each case a great deal of investigation goes into the making of his stories, as well as the fact that he has had to learn a great deal on topics ranging from chess-playing to historical first-editions, from 16th Century Dutch masters to Informatics and even swordsmanship.
His extraordinary imaginative abilities have been able to produce well-written adventure stories. Sign In. Showing all 8 items.
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