Monument to Miguel de Cervantes
Madrid Spain
2008

The Monument to Miguel de Cervantes is an instance of public art located in Madrid, Spain. Erected on the centre of the Plaza de España, it is dedicated to Miguel de Cervantes, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the Spanish language. The monument incorporates a stone monolith with several statues (including Cervantes') and a detached bronze sculptural group representing Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.

Plaza de España (Spanish for 'Spain Square') is a large square and popular tourist destination located in central Madrid, Spain at the western end of the Gran Vía. It features a monument to Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra and is adjacent to two of Madrid's most prominent skyscrapers. Additionally, the Palacio Real (Royal Palace) is only a short walk south from the plaza. After a two and a half years of renovation, on 22 November 2021, the square was reopened for pedestrians.

Alonso Quijano; spelled Quixano in English and in the Spanish of Cervantes' day, is the personal name of the famous fictional hidalgo (lowest nobility caste) who is better known as Don Quixote, a name he invents after falling into insanity. Alonso Quijano/Don Quixote is the leading character of the 1605/1615 novel Don Quixote de la Mancha, written by Miguel de Cervantes.

Sancho Panza is a fictional character in the novel Don Quixote written by Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra in 1605. Sancho acts as squire to Don Quixote and provides comments throughout the novel, known as sanchismos, that are a combination of broad humour, ironic Spanish proverbs, and earthy wit. "Panza" in Spanish means "belly".

Rocinante is Don Quixote's horse in the two-part 1605/1615 novel Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. In many ways, Rocinante is not only Don Quixote's horse, but also his double; like Don Quixote, he is awkward, past his prime, and engaged in a task beyond his capacities.

Rocín in Spanish means a work horse or low-quality horse, but can also mean an illiterate or rough man.

The name is a complex pun. In Spanish, ante has several meanings and can function as a standalone word as well as a suffix. One meaning is "before" or "previously". Another is "in front of". As a suffix, -ante in Spanish is adverbial; rocinante refers to functioning as, or being, a rocín. "Rocinante", then, follows Cervantes' pattern of using ambiguous, multivalent words, which is common throughout the novel.

Rocinante's name, then, signifies his change in status from the "old nag" of before to the "foremost" steed. As Cervantes describes Don Quixote's choice of name: nombre a su parecer alto, sonoro y significativo de lo que había sido cuando fue rocín, antes de lo que ahora era, que era antes y primero de todos los rocines del mundo"a name, to his thinking, lofty, sonorous, and significant of his condition as a hack before he became what he now was, the first and foremost of all the hacks in the world".

In chapter 1, Cervantes describes Don Quixote's careful naming of his steed:

Four days were spent in thinking what name to give him, because (as he said to himself) it was not right that a horse belonging to a knight so famous, and one with such merits of his own, should be without some distinctive name, and he strove to adapt it so as to indicate what he had been before belonging to a knight-errant, and what he then was."

https://equestrianstatue.org/don-quixote-and-sancho-panza-5/

Don Quixote and Sancho Panza
Don Quixote is a Spanish novel by Miguel de Cervantes. It was published in two parts, in 1605 and 1615. A founding work of Western literature, it is often labeled “the first modern novel” and many authors consider it to be the best literary work ever written.

The plot revolves around the adventures of a noble (hidalgo) from La Mancha named Alonso Quixano, who reads so many chivalric romances that he loses his mind and decides to become a knight-errant (caballero andante) to revive chivalry and serve his nation, under the name Don Quixote de la Mancha. He recruits a simple farmer, Sancho Panza, as his squire, who often employs a unique, earthy wit in dealing with Don Quixote’s rhetorical monologues on knighthood, already considered old-fashioned at the time. Don Quixote, in the first part of the book, does not see the world for what it is and prefers to imagine that he is living out a knightly story.

The most important sculpture of Don Quixote, together with his servant Sancho Panza on his donkey, is the monument to the Spanish novelist, poet and playwright Miguel de Cervantes on the Plaza de España in Madrid.

Miguel de Cervantes is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the Spanish language. The monument incorporates a stone monolith with several statues (including Cervantes’) and a detached bronze sculptural group representing Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.

The monument in Madrid forms a very popular background for pictures of friends and family. Anyone who wants to take a picture of just the sculptures needs to be there very early in the morning.