WAS DON QUIXOTE ORIGINALLY WRITTEN IN CATALAN?

This is the podcast of two articles I wrote that can be found on Academia. These studies examine the hypothesis that Don Quixote was originally composed in Catalan and subsequently translated and reframed within a Castilian literary framework. Drawing on textual analysis, historical documentation, and early modern print culture, the paper evaluates claims of linguistic interference, toponymic patterns, and archival irregularities that have been interpreted as evidence of a suppressed Catalan substratum. Particular attention is given to the political and cultural dynamics of the Iberian Peninsula in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, especially mechanisms of censorship, language hierarchy, and the consolidation of Castilian as the dominant literary language. While the theory remains controversial and challenges established Cervantine scholarship, the investigation situates it within broader debates on authorship, translation, and state formation. The article ultimately assesses whether the available philological and historiographical evidence substantiates the claim of an original Catalan version or whether alternative explanations better account for the observed anomalies.