A manuscript of the writer of Don Quixote has been found: the court relation of a supposed crime, with fiction-like overtones, that supposedly happened after his captivity.

At the end of a year dedicated to honor Cervantes in the 400 anniversary of his death, ABC has the scoop of a Cervantesque find: the discovery of a document that shows the writer’s handwritten signature. Only 11 samples of Cervantes’s signature have survived until the present time. But this one is particularly interesting for two reasons: it seems to be the oldest known signature of Cervantes, and it is not related to his employment around the villages of Andalucía, but instead to a judicial chronicle with fiction-like overtones, almost reminiscent of Boccaccio, which happened in Valencia at the time he was freed from captivity.

The discovery was made at the Archives of the Kingdom of Valencia by the archivist Jesús Villalmanzo – who has already published important documents about Joanot Martorell, the author of the «Tirant lo Blanch», as well as Ausias March – during his investigations on Friar Juan Gil, the Trinitarian monk who helped ransom Cervantes. This is a summary of a broader scientific paper that Villalmanzo is writing.

Read more here - ABC CULTURA Libros