ABSTRACT
The debate over the thorny issue of Cervantes's genealogy is still in force today, rich and heated as always, with illustrious advocates on both sides. Was Cervantes of converted Jewish extraction? Was he, in the inquisitorial language of the period, of "tainted" blood? The revisionary studies of Américo Castro and the more recent contributions of scholars such as Dominique Aubier, Leandro Rodríguez, Rosa Rossi and Louis Combet, situate Cervantes in the marginal zone of that intolerant society, fanatically obsessed with racial-religious "purity," and concentrate on his "difference," while those in the camp of Claudio Sánchez Albornoz and Eugenio Asensio ardently reject the notion of a Cervantes of converso ancestry. There are those who may still feel, as Nicolás López Martínez did in 1954, that finding a Semitic genealogy for Cervantes discredits him in some way and detracts from his essential national identity as a Spaniard. 1 Fourteen years later, Francisco Olmos García attempted to dismiss the question once and for all when he acerbically declared that the only one interested in the "tired" issue was Américo Castro. 2 Antonio Domínguez Ortiz admitted the possibility that "the author of the Quijote could have had some converso ancestor," but adds the extraordinary disclaimer that "this has not been demonstrated nor did it influence his work." 3 At the risk of contradicting these distinguished scholars, 117I will venture to add a voice to the ongoing conversation about Cervantes's lineage and its implications.
