Avellaneda

Avellaneda is the name attached within the novel to a rival continuation of Don Quixote, presented as the work of an Aragonese from Tordesillas rather than Cide Hamete Benengeli. The novel treats that book not simply as a literary competitor but as a challenge to the identity and finality of its hero: Don Quixote rejects the false version, seeks legal proof that he is not its protagonist, and, at the end, asks that its author be forgiven for having been provoked by him.

Identity and the Rival Book

The evidence identifies Avellaneda through the book attributed to him, not through a biography. In Altisidora’s account of a vision, devils play tennis with books as balls. A new, well-bound volume is struck so forcefully that its leaves scatter; the devils identify it as the second part of the history of Don Quixote, written not by Cide Hamete Benengeli but by an Aragonese who claims to be from Tordesillas. One devil condemns the book and orders it cast into hell. The scene makes the rival continuation’s reception part of the story itself, turning literary criticism into a comic spectacle of physical punishment.

The episode does not establish Avellaneda’s real identity or explain his motives. It gives the rival writer a pointed fictional description and makes the disputed book’s difference from Cide Hamete’s account explicit. Don Quixote, hearing of the book’s circulation, says that it is passed from hand to hand and receives a taste of everyone’s foot. He maintains that its protagonist is not himself, and measures its future by its truthfulness: a faithful history may endure, while a bad one will soon disappear. His response is both a refusal of the false portrayal and a claim that the character’s identity cannot be settled merely by printing his name.

Distinguishing the Two Don Quixotes

The dispute becomes a matter of record when Don Quixote meets Don Álvaro Tarfe, a gentleman associated with the rival history. Don Quixote presents a petition to the village alcalde, arguing that his rights require Don Álvaro to declare that he does not know the Don Quixote standing before him and that this man is not the one printed in the counterfeit continuation. The alcalde puts the declaration into legal form, and it is made with the required formalities. Don Quixote and Sancho Panza rejoice, although the narrator observes that their conduct already makes the difference between the two Don Quixotes—and between the two Sanchos—plain.

The encounter also reverses the direction of mistaken identity. Don Álvaro had been under an error about the man before him; after speaking with Don Quixote, he becomes convinced that he must have been enchanted, since he has encountered two such different versions of the knight. Before the two parties separate, Don Quixote explains his defeat and Dulcinea’s enchantment and the proposed remedy. The legal declaration settles the immediate question of identity within the fiction, while their conversation exposes how incompatible the rival book’s world is with the experience of the characters in Cide Hamete’s history.

Avellaneda at the End of Don Quixote’s Life

Avellaneda’s presence returns in Don Quixote’s will. Among his bequests, the dying knight asks his executors to seek out the author said to have written a history under the title The Apocryphal Second Part of Don Quixote and to beg his forgiveness. Don Quixote says he feels compunction because, without intending to, he caused the author to write so many monstrous absurdities. The apology is deliberately paradoxical: the character whose adventures have been appropriated accepts a share of responsibility for the appropriation, even as the novel continues to condemn the result.

The final address to the pen makes that condemnation a defense of narrative closure. Cide Hamete Benengeli insists that Don Quixote was born for him to write about, and that the rival writer has no right to carry the knight from his grave to Old Castile or to give him a third expedition. The two completed sallies, Cide Hamete argues, suffice to ridicule the whole company of knights-errant. He presents his own purpose as exposing the false and foolish tales of chivalry, while declaring Don Quixote’s bones at rest and his death final. Avellaneda therefore functions as the novel’s rival author within its metafictional conflict: the threat of an unauthorized continuation gives the ending a particular urgency, and the insistence on Don Quixote’s death closes the door that the counterfeit book had reopened.