Un escalvo llamado Cervantes.

[A Slave Called Cervantes], by Fernando Arrabal. Madrid: Espasa Calpe, 1996.

Spanish historians have long depicted Miguel de Cervantes as a heroic soldier whose exploits at the Battle of Lepanto cost him an arm. In this predictably unconventional biography of Spain's best-loved novelist, Fernando Arrabal advances the thesis that the author of Don Quixote was not the courageous champion of the Catholic faith and the fatherland that history books portray, but a tortured homosexual who may not have fought at Lepanto at all.

Bad boy of the Spanish theater, Arrabal is known for his avant-garde, nightmarish plays and his black humor. An outspoken critic of the Franco dictatorship, he fled Spain in 1955 and settled in France, where he lived until after Franco's death. Founder of the panic movement in drama, Arrabal parodied formal literary movements and explored the sexually and politically repressive nature of Spanish society. Given his penchant for shock, it is not surprising that he has taken an iconoclastic approach to the subject of his biography. However, Arrabal's purpose is not to demean Cervantes but to examine Spanish attitudes during the sixteenth century and draw certain parallels between the corrupt, authoritarian regime of Philip II and modern dictatorships.

Arrabal bases his premise on a document discovered in 1820--a warrant for Cervantes's arrest issued by the king of Spain in 1569, when the future creator of El Quixote was just twenty-one years old. According to this document, Cervantes was to be banished from Spain for ten years and have his right arm cut off for having wounded a certain Antonio de Sigura. Rather than submit to the king's justice, Cervantes escaped to Italy, where he served as valet to a high church official, the very effeminate Monsignor Giulio Acquaviva y Aragon. After nearly a year, Cervantes, bored with the routine and with Acquaviva, joined the papal forces going to fight in Lepanto. He could not fight with the Spanish navy because of the warrant for his arrest. According to Arrabal, Cervantes's incentive for joining the military was not a burning desire to defend Catholicism against the infidels but to surround himself with men and make Acquaviva jealous. That, and need. Without Acquaviva's support or a penny to his name, Cervantes had to find a way to earn a living. During the famous Battle of Lepanto in 1571, during which Christian forces under John of Austria defeated the Turks, Cervantes was sick and...