Cervantes and Guanajuato

Cervantes never came to Guanajuato. Yet, this is a city obsessed with the author. To a large degree, it's a tourist attraction -- the Cervantino certainly put Guanajuato on the map and brings in about 50,000 people each year. However, yesterday we visited the Museo Iconografico del Quijote, full of paintings and statues of Don Quijote, Sancho Panza, Dulcinea, Rosinante, and plenty of windmills and dragons; even a cross stitch of the iconic man of La Mancha. To me, this museum, while augmenting the tourism, also takes Gto's fascination with Cervantes over into obsession. I am tossing around some thoughts that compare Don Quijote's fantasies with Gto's -- I am not sure the comparison works, but there is something there. It is certainly interesting that Guanajuato turned to Don Quijote to transform its future from anonymity to something fantastic and exciting.
The city started the Cervantino festival in the 1950s, when student groups at the University would put on scenes from the book. Most of the events now are unrelated to Don Quijote, but you see statues of him and his author throughout town, as well as a guy dressed up as him, and t-shirts galore.