Quixotic search reveals remains

A search for the bones of Miguel de Cervantes has turned up the remains of the author of “Don Quixote.” In the end, the quest was finally fulfilled.

Researchers undertook the search for Cervantes’ bones in spring 2014. Although they knew where he had been buried in general, they had hoped to find the exact location of his remains.

Cervantes died April 23, 1616, and was buried at the Convent of las Trinitarias Descalzas (Convent of the Barefoot Trinitarians) in Madrid. When the convent was rebuilt late in the 17th century, his bones, along with others who were interred there, were moved.

To find the bones, a “team of 30 researchers used infrared cameras, 3-D scanners and ground-penetrating radar to pinpoint the burial site, in a forgotten crypt beneath the building,” the BBC reports.

They found wall niches and an underground crypt that contained a number of sets of bones. In January they released a photograph of a casket fragment marked with the initials “M.C.” in metal tacks.

Now they say that the initials were not meant to indicate Miguel de Cervantes but that the crypt did contain his remains. It also contains the remains of other adults who had been buried with him before their graves were moved.

“The remains are in a bad state of conservation and do not allow us to do an individual identification of Miguel de Cervantes,” forensic scientist Almudena Garcia Rubio said to the BBC. “But we are sure what the historical sources say is the burial of Miguel de Cervantes and the other people buried with him is what we have found.”