Spain lexicon D
Dehesa
Dehesa is the Spanish term for grazed oak groves (holm oaks, cork oaks), which cover extensive areas, particularly in south-west Spain (Extremadura, Andalusia). Dehesas were created when the original holm oak forests were grazed by local breeds of cattle, sheep and goats. The flat, nutrient-poor soils in south-west Spain offer poor conditions for arable farming. Pasture farming is more rewarding. The trees protect the soil from erosion, provide shade for the grazing animals and supply acorns, which are particularly prized for fattening pigs. This is how park-like stands of trees, also known as dehesas, developed here.
Dehesas are considered a prime example of a natural cultural landscape: trees protect the soil, provide fuel (in the past, charcoal was made from holm oaks) and fodder for the grazing animals, which also fulfil modern requirements as they are free from foreign substances. Nevertheless, the dehesas are now endangered as the traditional grazing animals are being replaced by modern breeds that are more productive but whose feed requirements have to be met by imported fodder. Dehesas that are no longer used can be recognised by the growth of bushes.
Don Quijote
The author of the novel ‘El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha’ (1605-1615) is Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547 Alcalá de Henares – 1616 Madrid). This novel is a parody of the romances of chivalry. Don Quixote is considered the most famous work of Spanish-language literature and is one of the most important novels in world literature. In his novel, Cervantes sets new standards for this genre. The setting and plot structure of Don Quixote are not characterised by the utopian, idyllic ambience of pastoral novels or the world of chivalric adventure novels, but by life in contemporary Spain, in the Siglo de Oro, Spain’s Golden Age. The novel tells the story of the eponymous protagonist, an impoverished squire who loses his mind after reading countless chivalric novels and decides to become a knight himself. He takes his old nag out of the stable, gives it the illustrious name Rosinante, puts together a makeshift suit of armour and sets off.
After various adventures, the supposed knight is found half-dead by a neighbour and brought home. Concerned friends burn most of his knight’s book collection. But Don Quixote sets off again after his recovery with Sancho Panza, whom he has appointed as his squire. Despite Sancho’s objections, Don Quixote mistakes the windmills on their way for giants and engages in his most famous battle with them. Here, as in all subsequent adventures, Don Quixote ‘reads’ the phenomena of reality as motifs from the chivalric novels and consequently interprets them as a call to action for himself, the travelling or ‘erring’ knight. In this way, Cervantes repeatedly demonstrates in Don Quixote what happens when the rules of the fantastic world of chivalry are applied to everyday reality.
While Cervantes was working on the second part of Don Quixote, a contemporary, Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda, published an apocryphal continuation of the first part. Cervantes explicitly departs from this work in the opening and closing passages of the second part. Don Quixote is now confronted with the fact that he himself has become literature, as the first part of Don Quixote becomes part of the fiction of the second part: Here, namely, Sancho and his master are talking with some friends about a new book containing their story. The two of them decide to set off again to make a sequel possible. In the second part of Don Quixote, Cervantes blurs the boundaries between literature and reality.
The long chain of adventures that follows comes to an end in a duel against the ‘Knight of the White Moon’, which brings Don Quixote his final and decisive defeat: The victor demands that he return home. On the way back, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza meet the characters from Avellaneda’s fake sequel and have it notarised that they are not one of them. Back in their home village, Don Quixote dies after a short illness. He has previously recognised his delusion and reassumed his true identity as Alonso Quijano el Bueno.