The researcher José de Contreras y Saro has presented a research work at the Ateneo de Sevilla according to which the famous universal writer Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra would have been born in Córdoba and not in Alcalá de Henares (Madrid), an extreme that would reflect a document from 1593 discovered in 1914 by the lawyer and historian Adolfo Rodríguez Jurado but at that time it did not have the “repercussion” it deserved; and that has been recovered for comparison with many other documents related to two other Miguel de Cervantes of which there is documentary evidence.
As the newspaper ABC has advanced and José de Contreras y Saro has stated in an interview on Canal Sur Radio, after presenting his study at the Ateneo de Sevilla, "among the nobility it was customary to call grandchildren after grandparents", giving rise to that “when there were different sons, there were grandchildren with the same name as their grandfather and there were different people with the same first name and surname.”
In this framework, the investigation that ABC has presented and has advanced has been aimed at “identifying each of those three Miguel de Cervantes” of whom there is a documentary trace “and dissecting which document belongs to each one”; to specify which of them was the famous writer, who finally “was born in Córdoba” and not in Alcalá de Henares as this work maintains.
To this end, this study has included “studies on graphology” and the comparison of “document signatures, such as the authorization of Don Quixote” for printing and other files, as well as an investigation that shows that there were two Miguel de Cervantes who participated in the battle of Lepanto, with “different dates of captivity and different military service records”; although “official historiography has confused or blurred the history of the two into one.”
“We have also been able to identify which of the three Miguel de Cervantes marries Catalina Salazar y Palacios, or Palacios y Salazar, and lives temporarily in Esquivias. Which of them is buried in Madrid and which of them was the writer", who would turn out to be Miguel de Cervantes born in Córdoba because "it is the only one in which in a single document he identifies his age, his place of birth, his occupation and his interest in writing comedies and cars.”
The document in question, as he explained, is dated 1593 and corresponds to the judicial process of Tomás Gutiérrez against the sacramental brotherhood of the Cathedral, "because they had not wanted to admit it and so he filed a process in which he has to use witnesses and documentary evidence that concludes, through a court ruling, in his favor.” One of the evidence presented by this person in the process is precisely “the testimony of Miguel de Cervantes (the one born in Córdoba), which is verified, collated and ratified.” “The sentences may be liked more or less, but they are res judicata,” he said.
The document in question, in detail, was found in 1914 by the lawyer and historian Adolfo Rodríguez Jurado, but then “it did not have the impact that was expected, because suddenly there was a cloud that obscured that whole issue”; after which “the document remained missing for more than a hundred years”, within the framework of “a great disaster with the historical documentary heritage of Cervantism” as a consequence of “fires in different parishes” or the Civil War, among other aspects.
Already in 1986, as he recalled, the family of the writer Luis Montoto donated his archive to the University of Seville, and it was cataloged for about 33 years, which gave rise to the rescue of this document in 2016. In that sense, this The research work has consisted of “studying this content in detail and making it public and also contrasting it with other documents that complement the only truth, that Miguel de Cervantes is Andalusian.”
