Andrés Trapiello’s modern-language version of Miguel de Cervantes’ classic is ‘necessary’ says expert, as Spanish academics rebel.

A new edition of Miguel de Cervantes’ 17th-century novel Don Quixote, which sees the classic story of the would-be knight errant adapted into modern Spanish, might be making waves in Spain, but Don Quixote scholar Ilan Stavans has said that Andrés Trapiello’s new version is needed if Spaniards are to keep on reading one of their country’s most celebrated works of literature.

Trapiello’s Don Quijote de la Mancha, which “faithfully” and “in full” adapts Cervantes’ 17th-century vocabulary into contemporary Spanish, was ninth on the Spanish bestseller list in late July, according to AFP. But it has also caused controversy, with Madrid academic David Felipe Arranz describing it as “a crime against literature” to the AFP last week, adding: “I ask the booksellers in Madrid and they tell me no one buys Cervantes’ original novel anymore because readers prefer the ‘light’ version … you cannot twist the flavour of the words of the greatest writer in our language.”

“Nothing upsets Spain more than people – often, its own people – meddling with Don Quixote,” admitted Stavans, the Lewis-Sebring professor in Latin American and Latino culture at Amherst College in the US. But Stavans pointed out that Trapiello’s adaptation of the novel follows the bestselling author Arturo Pérez-Reverte’s abbreviated edition from the Real Academia Espanola last year, and said it was a necessary development.

“Why did the RAE embark on it? Because if it doesn’t do something about people not reading Don Quixote, the institution itself will become irrelevant,” he said. “As a result of a number of factors, including school curriculum changes, young people in Spain aren’t reading. The thermometer is Don Quixote and it has been abandoned … My own impression … is that nine out of every 10 people who read Cervantes’s novel today are outside Spain. And a large portion of those readers access it in translation.”

Read more here.