Don

A professor from Malaga decided to rewrite ‘Don Quixote’ in Gothic calligraphy. Now he says it’s worth a million euros

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Manuel Marín Navarro, artistic drawing teacher from Vélez-Málaga, had an idea. “A madness”, rather, as he himself says: rewriting the entire great work of Miguel de Cervantes using Gothic calligraphy. By hand, dedicating between 7 and 8 hours a day. It’s been six years, seven months and 26 days and he still hasn’t completed the 344,000 words that make up the, why not say it, best book in the history of universal literature. Anyone would say of ‘The Quixote’ rots sanity. Wait, I emphasize it well, then Jesús G. Maestro gets angry: ‘The ingenious gentleman Don Quixote of la Mancha’. Miguel de Cervantes gave birth to a textually transmitted virus and, four centuries later, the pathogen is still free. Rewriting the 2.1 million characters in a Gothic font, letter by letter, ink on paper, is his great dream, the legacy of a life. A retiree doing lettering with the pulse of a teenager on TikTok? The difference here lies in the commitment. His company borders on the wild: the final book is on its way to weighing 20 kilos and, if it goes on sale, the author values ​​this monstrosity at one million euros. Shooting low. That million euros is a calculation that obeys pure labor arithmetic. Marín Navarro added hours, days and years, after such a monastic confinement in front of the folio, he estimates a salary equivalent to that of a medieval copyist in the current market. Not in vain has he drawn two million one hundred thousand characters with a pen. Pens that he has made himself. It has filled one thousand three hundred and five giant-sized (A3) pages. His cellulose monster is called ‘El Quixote Axárquico’, an orthographic nod to the princes edition of 1605. A geographical tribute to his native Andalusian region. The best book, the neatest edition. “I play music from the 17th century, I get into the character, I read the chapter first, I get the idea and then I start writing. I’ve enjoyed it a lot.” The devotion of this professor and writer for the work of Cervantes is indisputable. Of his personal library, which houses more than 4,000 volumes, three hundred of them are different editions of the hidalgo from La Mancha. At home he keeps eccentric jewelry and pays fortunes at closed auctions. Its most expensive copy cost 6,000 euros. It treasures absurd physical oddities, like a miniature tome printed on a single sheet. That is, the reader needs a powerful magnifying glass in front of that tiny paper. But his recent Gothic manuscript breaks any balance. The dimensions of the work require a brutal binding, so the professor is looking for a brave craftsman. It will take the entire skin of a cow to cover the caps. From prison to museum. And anyone who knows the biography of the writer from Alcalá de Henares well will know that he set foot on the cobbled streets of Vélez-Málaga. The roots go back a long way: he walked there in the hot summer of 1594, acting as a tax collector for King Philip II. He collected money and wheat for the coffers of an insolvent and corrupt empire. And the crown excommunicated the novelist twice for his zeal. What’s more, Cervantes collected debts from the all-powerful Church and it is said that the priests kicked him out of the atriums. A Sevillian bank went bankrupt with the royal collections deposited and that is how Cervantes ended up in a damp and gloomy cell in Seville. And there the figure of the crazy gentleman was born, influenced by Italian literature. Andalusian tradition venerates this prison origin of the work. And of course, Marín Navarro has decided to return the geographical favor to his land, giving his manuscript to the city Museum. The old San Juan de Dios Hospital will host this literary mammoth as long as no one sells the original volume to private funds, nor prints cheap copies for clueless tourists. He reserves a personal and final facsimile: the mother manuscript will sleep under institutional lock forever. Why gothic letters and not Comic Sans. It’s not because Marín Navarro is reviewing HIM or the work of Bauhaus and The Cure. On the contrary, the man from Malaga listens to lute and harpsichord madrigals locked in his study, assimilating tragedy and comedy in silence, using the best black Chinese ink, writing slowly. It takes a whole day to fill out a single page—the first page took a full week of trial and error. To avoid frustration with marks, ten handmade pens were made from reed and metal and it was imposed not to use modern white correctors, scraping the paper with a sharp blade if a mistake was made. As for the use of Textura font, which imposes straight lines and sharp angles, it is simple: history. Johannes Gutenberg applied it in his first printed Bible and German monks perfected it in monasteries. It is not the natural calligraphy of the Spanish Golden Age but it is the one associated with arcane knowledge. The Gothic line provides a brutal dramatic weight and requires much greater physical rigor in the wrist. Navarro does not give up: infected with COVID-19, during confinement the fever kept him in bed. Giving classes with a webcam, he pondered whether to give up or what, but in the end he pulled through and returned to writing the hard way. Between dirty cottons and blows, he already accumulates typos for the interior endpapers of the book. Illustrated by the best. Pictorial art always attacked the Cervantes novel with obsession. It was Gustave Doré who established the visual image in the 19th century—he traveled through Spain in 1861 and drew 370 detailed engravings. Many others wanted to repeat the play. Pablo Picasso sketched the starving silhouette in 1955, using the same black India ink. Salvador Dalí did the same with an American edition in 1946. And ignoring the works of Salvador Tusell, even the comedian Antonio Mingote contributed his … Read more

The Don Quixote that Orson Welles never finished will finally take shape. Four film libraries have had to agree to achieve this

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It took Welles almost thirty years to finish Don Quixote. It took Terry Gilliam another thirty and he got it, but the process was a nightmare that deserved its own documentary. Adapting Don Quixote has given us several minor classics and some other milestones (the historic Spanish animated series, without going any further) and now, four European film libraries are about to demonstrate that there is a third way, through the recovery and restoration of one of the most famous non-films in history. International collaboration. Four film institutions have decided to finish, to the extent that something like that can be finished, the work that Orson Welles left unfinished after his death. During the Cinema Ritrovato festival in Bologna, the Spanish Film Archive, the Cinémathèque Française, the Italian Cineteca Nazionale and the Filmmuseum in Munich They confirmed the beginning of the reconstruction of their ‘Don Quixote’. The project is coordinated by Esteve Riambau, historian, filmmaker and former director of the Filmoteca de Catalunya. The objective, as explained by Riambau himselfis to have the reconstruction ready in 2028. An infinite shoot. In 1957, Welles’ friend Frank Sinatra invested $25,000 in the project. The original idea It was to function as a complement to the singer’s own television show, in the form of a short special for CBS. At that time it was scheduled to star Charlton Heston, but it couldn’t be due to scheduling issues. Filming took place in Mexico, Spain and Italy and lasted, with interruptions and returns, over almost three decades. The agreement with CBS ended up falling apart and Welles decided to turn the television special into the feature film that would never be finished and that would evolve bathed in pure chaos: in Mexico, for example, Welles worked without a finished script, filming improvised sequences in the street, and he himself was in charge of keeping track of the filming with obsessive detail. Neither the death in 1969 of the actor who played Don Quixote, Francisco Reiguera, nor that of the actor who played Sancho Panza, Akim Tamiroff, in 1972, stopped Welles, who also continued filming in color. In 1982, three years before he died, he was still making changes to a film he affectionately called My baby. A curse that spreads. Don Quixote has a reputation for devouring races. Terry Gilliam needed eight failed filming attempts and a lawsuit from his own producer to carry out ‘The Man Who Killed Don Quixote’, a project that started in 1998 and finally premiered in 2018. The disaster of the first attempt, in 2000, with Jean Rochefort and Johnny Depp, was portrayed in the documentary ‘Lost in La Mancha’. Before them, Peter O’Toole, John Lithgow and Rafael Rivelles had already given life to the gentleman in much more conventional versions. What material do we have? A huge and dispersed amount. The Cinémathèque Française preserves about 80 minutes in 35 mm positives that were exhibited at the 1986 Cannes Festival. The Spanish Film Archive bought 16 and 35 mm rolls in 1991, totaling 50,000 meters of film, in addition to the cultural exploitation rights, and is the researcher of the entire legacy. The partially unpublished block is in Rome: between 40,000 and 50,000 meters of negatives that the editor Mauro Bonanni kept in Cinecittà and that Oja Kodar, Welles’s last collaborator, recovered in 2017 after settling a dispute with the editor. What’s coming Riambau affirms that all these materials “no one has seen yet.” Added to that are more than 2,000 pages of script that Welles wrote over decades, although some of the material has been lost. Riambau will order a script that does not yet have a clear structure and in 2027 it will be compared with the images to census all the available material. There may be surprises on the thousands of meters coming from Cinecittà: this Quixote can still cause more headaches. In Xataka | 124 years later, the Lumière brothers’ 1896 classic is scaled to 4K 60fps using artificial intelligence

Don Benito and Villanueva wanted to show Spain the advantages of merging town councils. They have ended up doing the opposite

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He February 20, 2022 It promised to be a historic day in Extremadura. In Spain, in general. After months of debate, arguments and growing media interest, that Sunday the residents of Don Benito and Villanueva (Badajoz) cast the ballot to decide something crucial for the future of both municipalities: whether they would merge into one. The ‘yes’ vote won, although with such a narrow margin and, above all, such a low level of participation that the union did not come together. Four years later, just jump into the air. February 20, 2022. To understand what just happened in Extremadura you have to go back at least four years, to February 20, 2022when the residents of Don Benito and Villanueva de la Serena held a referendum to decide whether to unite into a single town. Both town halls are located in Badajoz, they are separated by a few kilometers almost completely urbanized and share services like a hospital complex. Furthermore, in 2022 both were governed by PSOE mayors and they were in favor of their respective consistories embracing each other as one. A muted ‘yes’. The referendum backed the merger, which for a time seemed to clear the future of ‘Vegas-Altas’, the name under which he wanted to be baptized the new village. The problem is that that support was not strong enough to close the debate. To begin with, participation in the 2022 vote was modest for a decision of such significance: in Villanueva (25,873 neighbors) 58.94% of the census participated; in Don Benito (37,310) 50.42%. In the first location, 90.49% of the votes supported the alliance; but in Don Benito only 66.27% did so. It may seem like a high percentage, but the town councils had agreed that to move forward the support had to be at least 66%. That is to say, in Don Benito the procedure was passed by a few votes. As if that were not enough, there is another fundamental factor: the referendum was actually a popular consultation with advisory naturenon-binding. The merger was never ratified in a plenary session nor did the Board approve any constitutive decree. Only a protocol was signed in 2023 that remained a dead letter. Buried and buried well. That was almost five years ago. If the failed merger between Don Benito and Villanueva de la Serena is news again Now it is because, after more than four years without real progress, the first town (the most populated) has decided to definitively bury the union. Although the project has been stalled for some time, the Dombeniense Government, now led by the PP and Always Don Benitohas definitively shelved the idea. On Monday the municipal plenary session unanimously approved a motion declaring its definitive stoppage. What’s more, for “reasons of transparency, legal certainty and political clarity”, the Don Benito City Council has decided Formally communicate your decision to all the parties involved: the Ministry, the Government of Extremadura, the Provincial Council of Badajoz and of course the Villanueva City Council. Their approach is simple: they want to continue “collaborating” with their neighbor, but without ‘going through the altar’, limiting their agreements to the Comprehensive Services Association that already exists. “It’s not the time”. Don Benito’s decision is not important just because of what he says. Equally or even more relevant is who says it. The motion has passed with the unanimity of the plenarywhich means that all groups are in favor of putting it in the box. Including the PSOE, the party that promoted it in 2022. Each party (PP, Siempre Don Benito and PSOE) puts forward its own arguments and places emphasis on one issue or another, but the reading seems clear: the merger has it very complicated even if there is a change of government in 2027. “This is not the time to talk about the merger now,” assume in the PSOE, which advocates “recovering the economy and exciting the neighbors again.” Crossover of arguments. The case of Don Benito and Villanueva de la Serena is interesting beyond the province of Badajoz or Extremadura because it shows how difficult it is (on a political and social level) to unite two town councils. And in this case the neighbors had a good handful of arguments in favor. Beyond the economic and service cohesion that already exists, in 2021 the University of Extremadura published a report which concluded that the new urban area would be the second economic center of Badajoz and the first at the regional level in agriculture and livestock. According to their calculations, ‘marriage’ would increase household income by 2.75% and employment by 5%. Together they would add up today to a population of around 64,000 registeredmore than Merida. Opponents of the merger they put the accent at another point. They argue that the project is nothing more than “the result of a political decision driven in haste, without the necessary social consensus and without rigorous technical planning.” In fact, they regret that in February 2022, “the legal complexity” of the link was not clearly explained to the neighbors, nor were its “risks” and “real costs.” Broadening the focus. Except for a very strange surprise, everything indicates that the dream of Vegas Altas It will remain just that: a dream. In Spain, however, there are other examples of local mergers that have gone ahead. Two of the most recent are those of Oza dos Ríos-Cesuras and Cerdedo-Cotobadeboth in Galicia. The first It was forged in 2013setting a milestone that has not been experienced since 1981, and the second in 2016. Although in Galicia the processes advanced more agilely than in Extremadura, they have not been free of challenges. In 2022 The Country still warned of the challenges that Oza Cesuras had ahead of him a decade after his marriage, with unfulfilled investments and timid changes. In Galicia there has continued to be talk about some other unionalthough without landing them. Why does it cost so much? The million dollar question. In Spain there are almost 1,400 municipalities … Read more

Popeye’s and Don Julio: an exclusive menu for the great football game

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Popeye’s And Tequila Don Julio joins to create a delicious culinary combination, in the New exclusive menu “Popeyes X Tequila Don Julio Championship Lineup”, for the great football game. It is an exclusive limited time menu for people over 21 years in which they will combine The style of the Popeye seasoning and the flavors of Mexican tequila Don Julio, available in six selected restaurants. This menu has the aromas of the Agave of Tequila Don Julio in several dishes, among them THE NEW CHICKEN SANDWICH POPEYE X TEQUILA DON JULIO REST. The sandwich It is served with a scaling breast fillet in rested tequila, fried in crunchy bread with milk serum, covered with a colt salad with tequila and lemonspicy spreading, cure cured in barrels and a special dressing of Popeye’s. This Popeye’s Association and Tequila Don Julio provide new flavors with this fusion of crunchy chicken and agave notes characteristics of the rested tequila. Other menu flavors But there is more in the menu, it is not only the sandwich, but also Includes three -piece chicken wings with a garlic flavor of Louisiana Popeye Tequila Don Julio Resto, With a special sauce and an alcohol -free cocktail with lemonade Jamaica flower and spicy strawberry. The menu will be available on January 31 in some Popeye’s restaurants from the cities of New York, Miami and New Orleans, and also in Philadelphia and Kansas City, Cities of origin of the teams that will be facing in the great soccer game. Fans will have a preview of the Popeye’s X Tequila Don Julio Championship alignment menu, according to a statement. Then the list of participating restaurants according to the brand’s website: New York:Times Square –1530 Broadway, New York, NY 10036Madison Square Park – 14 East 23rd Street, New York, NY 10010 Miami:6800 Red RD, South Miami, FL 33143 New Orleans:621 Channel Street, New Orleans, 70130 Philadelphia1428 Old York RD Abington, Pa 19001 Kansas City:9460 Quivira RD Lnexa, Kansas 66215 Continue reading: (Tagstotranslate) Popeyes

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