This is the tomb of El Cid, Ruy Díaz de Vivar, in a little monastery in Old Castile:
In the graveyard outside is his horse Babieca:
They say the great battle horse died at forty and outlived El Cid by just a few months. El Cid had requested that it be buried near him in that monastery.
Now both El Cid and his wife Ximena lie in no less a place than the Cathedral of Burgos. Their remains were taken there in the last century:
Who was El Cid?
A warrior, a nobleman, a knight, a hero. He became a legend already a few years after he died. Most Spaniards know about him because they read an epic poem in school called El Cantar de Mío Cid. It is the first great poem in the Spanish language. It was written about 1140, only about fifty years after he died.
Others know about him because of the famous movie starring Charlton Heston and Sophia Loren.
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El Cid means Lord in Arabic. The Moors (North African Berbers and Saracens) gave him that name. Spaniards called him Campeador, which means something like the Fighter or Champion. He had two favorite swords. This is one:
Tizona, on display in Burgos, where it was recently bought for 1.6 million euros by the Comunidad Autónoma [State] of Castilla-Leon.
What did El Cid do to become so famous?
See El Cid—Spain’s Champion 2
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EL CID with Charlton Heston is now out on DVD in the US! Beautifully restored!
Erika: They took his remains out of the sepulchre to protect them from Napoleon’s soldiers. Why they decided to take them to the Cathedral I don’t know. I liked that movie too and, like you, haven’t seen it since I was a kid. I remember another one I saw that starred Sophia Loren and Frank Sinatra about a big cannon in that war with the French. (I just remembered its title: The Pride and the Passion.) That was the first time I ever saw the walls of Avila–such an impressive old medieval town.
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I don’t get it: they moved his remains, but left the original tomb in place? Why? And why did they have to move the remains?
I saw El Cid when I was a kid, and was very impressed with the hero. Interestingly, they never show that Charlton Heston movie, I haven’t seen it on DVD either. I’d like to watch it again–or not. Better to preserve the great memory of it.
I’m looking forward to this. Believe it or not (as you already know my outlook on life and history), it might surprise you to learn that I know almost nothing about him.