On 18 and 19 March, Barcelona will become the literary capital of Spain, at least for a couple of days, during which the 3rd International Meeting of the Cervantes Cities Network will be held. Coinciding with this meeting of cities and experts on Cervantes, we propose to recover one of the routes of the Literary Map of Barcelona, specifically route number 10, which will take you in search of the traces of Don Quijote in Barcelona. For free and whenever you are ready. 

The 3rd International Meeting of the Network of Cervantes Cities brings to Barcelona representatives of various cities linked to the author of Don Quijote. The event will open on 18 March in the Saló de Cent of Barcelona City Hall, with the presence of the Mayor, Jaume Collboni, the President of the network, José Manuel Lucía Megías, the Director of the Cervantes Institute, Luis García Montero, and the filmmaker Carme Riera, who will give a talk about Cervantes and Barcelona. The meeting will continue the next day at the MUHBA, where new lines of collaboration will be established between cities such as Alcalá de Henares, Lisbon, Madrid, Valladolid and Recife.

There is, therefore, no better opportunity than this to revisit once again the Barcelona landscapes that Miguel de Cervantes saw when he was in the city and those that he made his character relive. The author must have passed through the city around 1610 and he already made a praiseworthy description of the city in one of his Novelas Ejemplares (Las dos doncellas). It is believed that he lived in the house at Passeig de Colom number 2, a 15th-century house that, at least in popular tradition, has come to be known as ‘the house of Cervantes’.

It is not the only place in the city related to the writer. At the Biblioteca de Catalunya, in what was once the infirmary of the Antic Hospital de la Santa Creu i de Sant Pau, you will now find the Sala Cervantina of the Biblioteca de Catalunya. Here you will find a fabulous collection dedicated to the work of Cervantes, which was donated to the institution at the beginning of the 20th century by the bibliophile Isidre Bonsoms Sicart. It is one of the best Cervantes collections in the world.

Continue walking around the city and you will reach Perot lo Lladre street. It alludes to the bandit Perot Rocaguinarda, who appears, under the name of Roque Guinart, in the adventures of Don Quijote.

You are now near Portaferrissa, not far from Barcelona Cathedral. It is more than likely that Cervantes visited it and, in particular, this chapel of the Christ of Lepant, with an image that was also in the battle where the writer lost the mobility of one hand. The Christ was donated to the Cathedral by John of Austria in person in the year of the battle, 1571.

The building of the old printing house owned by Sebastián Cormellas, the first to see the character of Don Quijote at work, is still on Carrer del Call and is an essential stop on this route, which will also take you to Barcelona City Hall, where the Sala del Quijote contains paintings alluding to the adventures of the character, to Carrer de Cervantes, which has been dedicated to the author since the 19th century, and to Pla de Palau. The latter is the saddest stop on the route, as here, where there was the wall separating the city from the beach, the knight of the White Moon met Quijote, who promised to leave his adventures behind and return home.

If you want to follow the trail of Cervantes and Quijote, come and do the Don Quijote route in Barcelona, whenever you want and at your own pace, but first check this link for the complete route.