MADRID — An important forensic investigation in Spain recently confirmed that bones buried in Madrid’s Trinitarian Convent belong to the author of Don Quixote, who died poor and forgotten almost 400 years ago.
One wouldn’t want to spoil a good headline. “Cervantes has appeared! Cervantes has appeared!” proclaimed the papers. But the bad news was, well, he’s dead. And that’s just about the only thing on which all the forensic scientists actually agreed.
Again with the good news: millions of lovers of literature worldwide now have an official place of pilgrimage where they can visit the grave of the man who gave us the Man of La Mancha. The remains of Miguel de Cervantes are indeed in the heart of the so-called Barrio de las Letras (the Literary Quarter) in the crypt of the convent of the Trinitarios Descalzados, or shoeless Trinitarians.