Professors from the School of Philosophy and Letters publish throughout the summer in the series "Líderes en la ficción" (Leaders in Fiction), published by the newspaper Expansión. Each week, they bring us the virtues of different literary characters.

Beyond its enormous literary value, when we approach Don Quixote we can also appreciate the profound values -in an ethical sense- that its reading offers us and that are part of its bequest, highlighting the validity and modernity of Cervantes' thought. Indeed, concepts such as friendship, love, authenticity, justice, freedom, tolerance (and the power of dialogue), and also hope, are very present, not only in this work, but in Cervantes' production as a whole. Such values are carried by that "madman mixed with the sane" who is the protagonist of Don Quixote: they are intrinsically linked to each other in his person and are, in some way, inseparable. All together they encourage Alonso Quijano's perseverance in his dream of being a knight-errant, of being Don Quixote, something that will constitute his most intimate essence until his defeat on the beach of Barcelona at the hands of the Knight of the White Moon. 

We know that in the 17th century, Don Quixote had an eminently comic reception (the story of a mad nobleman and his simple squire, sort of ridiculous buffoons who are the objects of numerous jokes, more or less cruel, that make everyone laugh). But then each generation has projected on it its own peculiar concerns: it has been read as the last novel of chivalry, as a verification of the failure of the Spanish heroic dream, as a synthesis of the idealism/reality conflict... And Don Quixote, besides being a model of vital experience, has been considered a hero loaded with a deep symbolism.

A hero of enormous depth, Don Quixote presents a complex personality, in which his impulse to act and the coherence of his vital project , his authenticity, stand out. An "adamic" character who is born to a new life when he is already in full maturity, he goes out into the wide fields of Castile to forge his destiny as staff knight-errant, to make his dreams come true. Dreams of love, justice and freedom, a triad of feelings for which Alonso Quijano the good -that is how his countrymen call him- becomes Don Quixote of La Mancha, for which the nobleman from La Mancha dreams of being and is a true and real knight-errant (even though he has received the knighthood "by mockery" from the hands of a rogue and sly innkeeper). Because of all those dreams that Don Quixote treasures in his heart, he will not be hurt by the defeats and the crushing, the blows and the bruises, the mockery and the misunderstandings of the people he encounters in his wanderings. Because he allows himself to be guided only by the dazzling light of the ideal. Because in his long walk our brilliant madman-crazy or sane-crazy will always dream of blue skies and clear horizons. Because he will walk in pursuit of a chimera that he knows he will never reach, but also being aware that the beautiful and the sublime is precisely in that search. Because every step he takes brings him closer to that high, distant and impossible utopia. And that is his defeat and his victory, his failure and the cause of his imperishable glory, his eternal and masterful lesson. 

What a magnificent teaching Cervantes gives us through his immortal creature! That men -any man, all men- are free and must always fight to make their dreams come true, even if the road to achieve that goal is carpeted with defeats and bitterness. Because Don Quixote's is certainly not a road of roses. It is, rather, a path of thorns and thistles. And in this long and painful pilgrimage, Alonso Quijano becomes Don Quixote and, after traveling the path of his adventures, returns to his unnamed birthplace to be Alonso Quixano again and die sane in his bed, cradled in the warmth of home, surrounded by his family and friends. And he dies sane, knowing that "in the nests of yesteryear there are no more birds today". However, he knew how to realize his destiny staff a knight-errant, precisely because he was never afraid to make it come true; because he was never afraid of difficulties; because he was never afraid to face the harsh reality with which his dreams of glory and his chivalric fantasies, which were not chimeras, but ideals, continually clashed. Because he always maintained hope. From all his struggles, Alonso Quijano emerged broken as a man and tempered as a knight-errant, as Don Quixote de la Mancha, in short, as a hero. And that is the main teaching: that every man who fights for a beautiful ideal is a hero who can never be defeated, even if he suffers, one after another, a thousand defeats. That he can be defeated, but not defeated in his internal regional law , even if his bones are crushed and broken in huge battles with windmills, wine skins or flocks of sheep.