Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra lived through two distinct periods in Spanish history. The first was a "golden age" of military success, national pride, and intellectual freedom; the second, a time of economic and military weakness and religious and intellectual repression. Don Quixote (pronounced "kee-hotay") was written at the end of his life and in the midst of the second of these periods. Spain at that time was in a state of desengano (a word meaning both "disillusion" and "disappointment"); the Spanish people realized by 1605 that the powerful empire of the previous century had been built on a shaky foundation-and that the foundation was crumbling.
Decline of the Spanish empire. In 1547, the year Cervantes was born, Spain was ruled by King Charles I, who was also the leader of the Holy Roman Empire and a member of the Hapsburg royal family. Charles ruled for many years over Spain, Austria, the Netherlands, and parts of Italy and Germany. He also controlled the territories that Spain had conquered in the New World since Columbus's first voyage in 1492, which had proved to be a valuable source of silver and gold.
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