The curse of Quevedo's spurs.

Francisco de Quevedo and Villegas.

That Francisco de Quevedo was a picturesque character is, without a doubt, a fact well known to all. Either because of his acid and aggressive verses, often focused on Góngora and his criticism of the ruling classes, or because of his courage and gallantry when fighting, Toledo in hand, with anyone who dared accept his affront.

Quevedo was not an ordinary golden age writer and surely, although none were, he represents better than anyone the character that characterized Spanish society during the years in which the empire began to succumb on its own weight.

He was a fictional character in himself, capable of mastering the sword just like his pen. With a daring and hurtful dangerousness, lethal in any of the circumstances. Characterizing his life by an illuminating lack of respect or fear towards any of his victims. Even Count-Duke Olivares, valid of King Felipe IV, ended up being the victim of his irreducible verses.

Although no one managed to beat him in a duel (his great skill with "the rapier" is known), he did have to live, on more than one occasion, secluded or imprisoned because of his verses dedicated to the Spain that he loved and that he saw succumb under the hand of womanizing kings and absent valid ones.

With all this, I would like to tell you a story that very few will know and that shows that Quevedo, dead or alive, wouldn't go unnoticed so easily, taking, in this way, his name to the qualifier of legend.

First of all, it should be noted that, his nickname "knight of the golden spurs" comes from a certain event in his life. Quevedo, who suffered from a limp, had golden spurs forged for the day of his appointment as knight of the Order of Santiago. Logically, for such an important act in his career, he could not allow his limp to overshadow his figure. For this reason, he decided to solve it with this commission.

Caricature by Fernando Barrial Juscamaita for the Francisco de Quevedo Foundation in Ciudad Real.

Throughout his life he practically did not use them, keeping them as a memento of one of the most important events of his career. Anyway, when he died in 1645 he was buried, it is said that at his own request, with his precious spurs. His mortal remains were buried in the place where he died, specifically in the Santo Domingo de Villanueva de los Infantes Convent.

Some time later, A bullfighter named Diego, aware of the existence of the golden goads, bribed some of the friars to be able to desecrate them from the writer's coffin. He intended, with such a misdeed, to get the precious treasure so that he could then fight with what was foreign in the square. Let us remember that, unlike now, at that time bullfighters did not work on foot but on horseback. Hence the need to have spurs in the bullfighting of the time.

After having obtained them, he appeared in the Plaza Mayor with the usurped spurs ready to deal with the bull. Anyway, his adventure did not last long since, shortly after leaving the ring, he was attacked by the bull, practically dying in the act.

It was surely a mere coincidence. I will not be the one to deny and judge the vagaries of fate. Even so, for my dreamy soul prone to myth and legend, I prefer to think that perhaps, just perhaps, it was Quevedo himself who, as he would have reacted in life, punished the cowardly daring of that bullfighter, thus condemning that bullfighter. that he had shown the arrests necessary to steal Don Francisco himself his precious golden spurs.