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Don Quixote is full of proverbs, refranes, most of them spoken by Sancho Panza, who is a living storehouse of such popular wisdom. But the knight, too, often mentions his own favorite sayings, for instance : "El hombre es hijo de sus obras" -- which states that one is a child of his or her own deeds or actions. In this sense, maybe this means that one is essentially free.

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Don Quixote as a novel is very much about this issue of human freedom -- of man constantly imagining that he is at war with foes of that freedom. Many authors and visual artists have addressed the same theme of freedom through time – incidentally, autobiographically, I became aware of its importance as a child when my parents explained to me that our family would be emigrating from our native land, due to problems connected to the question of freedom, or the problem of the absence of freedom in our country.

It is also interesting that relatively few readers nowadays look in the novel Don Quixote in order to think about this problem genuinely. It is a book of fantasy and perhaps because of that it is one of the best sources of wisdom we can consult to see what freedom is all about – freedom and fantasy and dreaming go very much hand in hand. This is the reason why in most countries where freedom is assailed, poets and artists are the very first figures who are persecuted.

There are two final aspects of my painting that I would like to tell you about before closing this presentation – and both of these points are related to the idea of freedom.

1)      The two characters who are the focus of my canvas, Don Q and Sancho; and 2) my title The Golden Age, LA EDAD DE ORO. 

In my canvas I tried to show an intimate connection between these two elements: the double portrait and the myth of the Golden Age.

The novel that inspired this canvas was published in two installments, the first of these in 1604 and the second in 1612. Turbulent time for Spain, a major world power. On the surface, the book tells the story of a man in his 50s, of a minor aristocratic class, whose brain “dries up” from reading too many books of knight errantry, to the point that he decides to go out to the real world and look for adventures – to see them – as they appeared in his favorite poems and books of this aforementioned type. Therefore, he imitates what he has read about – in the things he wears or carried, his arms, in the places he goes to, and also in the company that he keeps – in his squire Sancho Panza, specifically. In my canvas you will see how Don Q is angular in his features, while Sancho is more rotund, and this is my way of describing visually what I see in their characters in the way they express themselves or act in the course of the story.

In my canvas the two characters are the central focal point of the composition, and I painted their expressions serious or pensive (Don Q) or smiley, jolly, kind (Sancho). But note how I depict Sancho’s arm slung on Quixote’s shoulder. Also, Sancho’s torso is bare, bringing out his more carnal personality, his more earthly values, so to speak, his down-to-earth disposition. The theme of humanism and friendship throughout the novel – the book is one long dialogue between the two characters, discussing many things. But perhaps most of all, in those conversations (not a few of which are full of friction and issues of pain or grief and disagreement between them) – the overarching lesson of this book seems to be the importance of conversation, of communication with a kindred soul – the gift of friendship, and how this quixotic/sanchoesque friendship can be one long adventure in its own way, or can be one way of travelling through life. Conversation and freedom, to tie this together now, may also be very intimately related. Knowing that we have friends – there is freedom in this knowledge. (Jorge Luis Borges says in several of his works that for his countrymen and women, friendship is indeed a passion. I would venture that there is much passion in the friendship between Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, as evidenced in their conversations. Freedom and passion go hand in hand!)

The Golden Age – LA EDAD DE ORO – the scene where this is discussed is in Chapter X, BOOK I—which is cradled in a series of chapters where this theme is present; Chapter X immediately follows that of Quixote’s encounter with the Vizcayan – but the don’s speech about the Golden Age, for the goatherds, is one of his most moving addresses in the novel – where he reflects on an era, in illo tempore, or in some remote time, where there was no distinction between yours and mine – a sort of dreamlike state of communism, when, as Don Q explains, there was no greed or even the need to wear  unnatural coverings imposed on one’s body, etc.

To experience knight errantry – as Don Q sees and expresses things – is the only way to take us back to the Garden of the Golden Age. Interestingly, Don Q points out at the beginning of the novel how in his friendship with Sancho there is no inequality or imbalance of this golden parity: the relationship they have of lord and squire is, at heart, one of peers or equals.

The Golden Age, for us, I would suggest, involves a rediscovery of humanism and friendship in everything we do, as a way back to the Garden. It is a return to fantasy and art as a way to see the world from within – from the inner script which we may co-write or co-author with certain books.

The Lady of the books of knight errantry represents the feminine in the highest form of knowledge. That which is at the heart of everything, of every situation or story.

Time in Don Quixote : the proverbs “…en los nidos de antaño, ya no hay pájaros hogaño…” (“There are no birdnests of yesteryear in today’s tres”)

Duality – Sancho and Quixote : seeing double, in order to see straight or to clear our vision.