Don Quijote in Guanajuato

Guanajuato is famous for its Cervantino Festival - a three-week literary, musical, artistic extravaganza held each fall. And one of Guanajuato's finest museums is the Museo Iconográfico del Quijote. Why this obsession with Don Quijote, the protagonist of the renowned Spanish novel written by Miguel Cervantes in the early 1600s? How is Don Quijote - who chased windmills in Spain's countryside hundreds of years ago - connected to Guanajuato? Why would this character resonate in the Mexican landscape and culture?

In the 1930s, during the Spanish Civil War, the Mexican president Lazaro Cárdenas welcomed Spanish intellectuals who were fleeing their war-torn country with only libros y zapatos - books and shoes. First Spain conquered México, and then, a few hundred years later, México provided a refuge for many of Spain's most talented people. Many of these Spanish exiles played an important role in México's education reforms. One exile, Eulalio Ferrer Rodriguez, founded the Quijote museum, which today is filled with hundreds of paintings, murals, statues, and carvings of this lanky, dreamy literary figure and his short, round sidekick, Sancho. I imagine that Cervantes's story provided a powerful connection to their homeland for the Spanish refugees in México. And the tale itself is one of romantic optimism confronting loss and disillusionment, as Don Quijote is repeatedly deceived by his fellow countrymen as he seeks adventure in the land he loves and thinks he knows.