CAIRO, EGYPT.- The Spanish Embassy in Cairo presents Don Quixote: Four Hundred Years around the World, on view through une 20, 2005. Through its 32 graphic panels and audiovisual component with musical and film excerpts, this exhibition narrates the most memorable milestones of Don Quixote: the book and its history.

Don Quixote and Sancho Panza emerged from the book 1605, the same year that it was published, and entered everyday life. Their figures appeared in a multitude of processions and parades, not only in Spain, but also in Germany, Mexico and Peru... Editions and translations proliferated. The first known depection of the pair is from 1614. Since then, thousands of engravings, paintings, tapestries and sculptures have portrayed them. They very soon burst onto the stage and into ballet and opera, where they remain today. There are hundreds of musical works devoted to them, and cinema virtually began with their adventures. They entered the dictionary and became paradigms of human types. They inspired philosophies, and great writers of all languages have commented on them. Never has there been anything comparable in history; never has a creative work achieved such an extent with a people, while at the same time forming part of humanity’s popular imagination.