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SPANISH HISTORY

Rare editions of Spain’s Don Quixote go up for auction

Two volumes of "Don Quixote", the epic Spanish novel by Miguel de Cervantes, will go up for auction in Paris, where they are expected to fetch between €400 and €600K combined. Here's the incredible story of how they were unearthed.

Published: 30 November 2022 09:41 CET
Rare editions of Spain's Don Quixote go up for auction
Two volumes of Miguel de Cervantes's 'Don Quixote' novel, are pictured at Sotheby's auction house in central London on November 25, 2022, ahead of their auction, where they are expected to realise GBP 340,000-510,000 (€400,000-€600,000; USD 414,000-622,000). (Photo by Daniel LEAL/AFP)

Ed Maggs examines a shelf of leather-bound antique books that his family have been selling from their landmark London shop for the last 170 years.

It was at Maggs Bros. Ltd that a Bolivian diplomat acquired two volumes of “Don Quixote”, the Spanish epic novel by Miguel de Cervantes, which are now up for auction.

The books go on sale in Paris on December 14th, where they are expected to fetch between €400,000 and €600,000 ($414,000 to $621,000) combined.

They were last bought in the 1930s by diplomat Jorge Ortiz Linares, who was subsequently Bolivia’s ambassador to France in the 1940s.

He was the son-in-law of Simon Patino, a Bolivian industrialist living in Paris, who made his vast fortune in tin mining in the early 20th century.

Ortiz was an avid collector and was on the hunt for an original edition of “Don Quixote”, which many consider to be the first modern novel.

The tale of a poor Spanish gentleman who reads so many chivalric romances that he thinks he is a knight was a huge success when it was published in 1605.

In the 1930s, Ortiz’s research led him to the British capital, which Maggs describes as “arguably the most important centre for the rare book trade” in the world.

Maggs Bros Managing Director Ed Maggs poses for a photograph at his antiquarian booksellers in London. (Photo by JUSTIN TALLIS /AFP)

‘Real fortune’

Maggs is the great-great-grandson of Uriah Maggs, who founded the bookstore in 1853.

Over the years, it gained a reputation among British royalty and exiled monarchs such as Manuel II of Portugal and Spain’s Alfonso XIII.

The bookshop, now in Bedford Square near University College London and the British Museum, came to own 1,358 rare editions of Spanish-language books.

They were collected in a catalogue published in 1927 “still quoted by bibliographers today”, says Jonathan Reilly, an expert on the Maggs bookshop.

Reilly points to one of the works that caught Ortiz’s eye: two first editions of “Don Quixote” — Book I, published in 1605, and Book II, which came out 10 years later.

Both were on sale for £3,500 — the equivalent of nearly £174,000 ($210,000) — and “a real fortune at the time”, he added.

Ortiz, however, was out of luck and found that the books had already been sold. But he left his details just in case.

Two volumes of Miguel de Cervantes’s ‘Don Quixote’ novel are pictured at Sotheby’s auction house in central London on November 25th 2022. (Photo by Daniel LEAL / AFP)

Obsessive

In 1936, he received a long-awaited call from the bookseller and made a trip to London as soon as he could.

“Why did he get on an airplane immediately? The book collector is sometimes enthusiast, sometimes a little bit obsessed,” said Maggs.

Ortiz ended up buying a third edition of Book I and a first edition of Book II, said Anne Heilbronn, head of books and manuscripts at Sotheby’s auction house.

He paid £100 (about £5,600 today) for the first edition and £750 (£42,000 today) for the second.

Since then, the books have remained out of public view but can now be seen at Sotheby’s in London before the Paris sale next month.

The first editions of Don Quixote Book I are rare because many were lost in a shipwreck near Havana when they were sent en masse to Latin America, the auction house said.

Published in 1608, the third edition was the last to be printed during Cervantes’ lifetime and was corrected by him, Heilbronn said.

“All the translations we have today come from this third edition so it’s important,” she added.

Sale

What makes the books unique is that they were bound in the 18th century for an English collector.

Such early bindings of the book are very rare, said Heilbronn.

On his visit to Maggs Bros on December 21, 1936, Ortiz bought three other gems: a first edition of Cervantes’ “Novelas ejemplares” published in 1613, and “La Florida del Inca” (1605).

In the latter, Garcilaso de la Vega recounts the conquest of America from the point of view of indigenous peoples.

Ortiz also bought the “Hispania Victrix” (1553) about the conquest of Mexico, which is the first work in history to mention California.

On Wednesday, the five works will be returned to the bookseller for a few hours before leaving for Paris.

They will then be auctioned off along with the 83 other items in the Ortiz Linares collection put together with the help of antiquarian bookseller Jean-Baptiste de Proyart.

Total sales are estimated at between €1.8 million and €2.5 million.

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SPANISH HISTORY

‘La leyenda blanca’: How Spain responded to the black legend hoax

You've probably heard of 'la leyenda negra' (the black legend) used by the English and other nationalities to demonise the Spanish empire, but few people know that Spain responded with its own subtle propaganda machine against its enemies.

Published: 12 July 2024 10:57 CEST
'La leyenda blanca': How Spain responded to the black legend hoax

Hispanophiles and history buffs among our readership have likely heard of la leyenda negra – the so-called ‘black legend’ used to undermine the Spanish empire and demonise Spain, Catholicism and Spaniards more generally.

This was essentially an early form of fake news or propaganda (some historians call it a ‘hoax’) pushed by Spain’s imperial rivals in order to downplay its achievements and damage its reputation abroad.

But what you might not have known is that Spain had its own propaganda tool in response – la leyenda blanca (the white legend).

READ ALSO: The forgotten country that existed between Spain and Portugal

La leyenda negra

Firstly, a bit about the black legend. Most historians believe La leyenda negra dates back to the 16th century and is rooted in imperial rivalry, although some history books suggest animosity against Iberian people began even earlier, with different versions of the black legend conjured up by Italians, Germans and Jews (the latter having been kicked out by the Catholic Kings in 1492). 

During the 1500s, it was mostly pushed by the English (as well as Spain’s other European rivals such as Holland) and it was designed to portray the Spanish as particularly evil or dangerous, downplay its culture, civilisation, and imperial discoveries, and generally to try and undermine Spain’s power and reputation abroad.

Of course, this was mainly done due to competition, but it also speaks to the fierce anti-Catholicism in parts of northern Europe in the early-modern period.

Using disinformation to demonise or discredit your political opponents is nothing new, of course. Nor is manipulating public opinion. But whereas today ‘fake news’ is done through algorithms and artificial intelligence, back then it was done with the technology of the day – namely the printing press and pamphlets.

An 18th century artwork by Bernard Picart depicting the Spanish Inquisition carrying out tortures.

According to an article by the University of Valladolid: “Exaggerating the facts, if not inventing them, was one of the tactics used by the English to spread the ‘black legend’ of Spain, with which they were at war (1585-1604), and with which they were competing in the American expansionist race.

“To this end, they had the support of English pamphleteers who waged a war of propaganda, anti-Spanish and anti-Catholic, to manipulate English public opinion.”

Historians usually note that the black legend was based on Spanish atrocities in Latin America (of which there were certainly many) but exaggerated by the English in order to stir up anti-Catholicism and portray the Spanish as a bloodthirsty people.

Another example is the Spanish Inquisition. They’re immediately associated with religious lunacy and carrying out torturous atrocities over the slightest hint of heresy and blasphemy, an image which has since been largely debunked (they were no angels, but they didn’t kill as many people in Spain and America as has been claimed).

La leyenda negra is well established in historiography. What’s less known is Spain’s response – la leyenda blanca (the white legend).

La leyenda blanca

Research from Berta Cano Echevarría, Professor of English Philology at the University of Valladolid, suggests that rather than creating a retaliatory black legend, the Spanish instead built a ‘white legend’ around the English, a type of propaganda that was more subtle but effective.

The thing that allowed the Spanish to do this, Echevarría says, was the lack of knowledge about the English in Spain at the time.

“If we search the literary works for the image of the English at the time, we find a frustrating gap. There are very few characters of this nationality in fiction, and those that do appear have no distinctive features of national character, especially in comparison with the French, Portuguese and Moors, who were portrayed according to stereotypes of the time,” she says.

England was considered remote and largely irrelevant by Spaniards until the Spanish-English War (1585–1604) began.

READ ALSO: Did Spain really not have any colonies?

Interestingly, in what goes against the cultural stereotypes of the 21st century, in the 16th century it was the English who made an effort to learn Spanish and to translate the works of Spanish writers, whereas in Spain, Echevarría says, “there are hardly any translations from English and no one was interested in learning the enemy’s language.”

As such, the main source of information about England were exiled English Catholics themselves, many of whom were refugees in Spain due to religious persecution. They were also the authors of the very few translations from English into Spanish that existed at the time.

Why is that important? Well, Echevarría says, “the English colleges in Spain became not only centres of education but also important transmitters and conveyors of secret information between the two countries”.

Joseph Creswell, a Jesuit in charge of the Valladolid college, was widely respected as a man with intimate knowledge of the inner-workings of the English court, and he was kept up to date by the endless letters he received daily from England.

Some of these letters were translated (exaggerated and manipulated) and then published in Spanish. Many had descriptions of persecuted Catholics in England.

Echevarría gives the examples of “nuns persecuted and dispossessed of their property, families separated and forced to flee to France and, above all, priests captured, tortured and cruelly executed.”

Interestingly, these sorts of letters and pamphlets were designed not to suggest that the English were an evil Protestant people, but rather the opposite: to give the impression that the English were a Catholic people suffering the tyranny of Protestant rulers.

READ ALSO: The one thing to know about each of Spain’s ‘crazy’ kings and queens

As such, portraying England as a Catholic country victimised by Protestant politicians was designed to win popular support for then King Felipe II’s supposed plan to invade and ‘return’ it to Catholicism. According to the propaganda, Spain would have, in this case, been a liberating force.

But it never came to fruition. The black and white legends, and propaganda wars more broadly, died off when Spain and England signed for peace in 1604-1605.

Bizarrely, Echevarría notes, the Spaniards then started pumping out pro-English propaganda: “In order to convince people that the peace was beneficial, a curious pro-English propaganda campaign was promoted in which even Miguel de Cervantes took part.”

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