The paradoxical figure of El Cid as the emblem of the Reconquest comes to Don's hair Arturo Perez Reverte to dismount the myth for a while, in the unifying sense of official history. Because precisely that, myths and legends always have their loopholes, their dark sides. In the case of El Cid, all of him is a mist into which his figure was introduced over time. Dignified by songs and banished by kings and lords. Nothing better than a revision of the legend to magnify the figure from its contradictions, more in line with every neighbor's child.
To begin with, let's think about the curious fact that the now heroic name of Cid comes from that Sidi (Lord in Arabic), which leads us to think that Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar was a mercenary with more interest in survival than in the expansion of the kingdom. some on the peninsula. Even more so considering that perhaps the discovery of the most stark pettiness that forced his exile would push him to openly offer his warrior skills to any bidder.
And so, with that label of sponsored arms, this national hero traveled all over Spain with his hosts. Guys faithful to his orders, with that sinister point of truth from a time when everything was trivial, even surviving every dawn. Men willing to do anything with that honor, in the face of enemies of any creed, which meant giving their lives for a victory in which everyone won their luck: either by leaving this world or, in another case, by conquering a new opportunity to eat hot while basking in the blood still on their swords.
I have always been fascinated by the phrase that indicates that a hero is anyone who does what he can. And back in the XNUMXth century, with the right circumstances, a hero was simply someone who managed to eat, like a wild animal. Simply because there was no more. The conscience already if that was given in any case to the faith. that firm belief that made the fierce fighters find themselves compatible with their Christian imaginary, no matter who they faced. More than anything by itself there really was a paradise to visit and they could lose it after such a miserable life on this planet.
So, at the time of a more credible outlining intention of a character like El Cid, there is no one better than Pérez-Reverte to incarnate himself as his biographer. As a faithful reporter of greatness and misery; as a shocking chronicler of some hard years. Days of men and women of stony hardness. Types among whom, however, extreme truths could be discerned in contrast to the darkness of that world.
You can now buy the novel Sidi, the new book by Arturo Pérez Reverte, here: