Paper short abstract:

This paper provides a case study that assesses the social construction of authenticity within the Spanish society. It takes the Nara Document as a frame of reference, and tests its validity in relation to the media and official institutions for the representation of Miguel de Cervantes.

Paper long abstract:

The paper focuses on the issue of authenticity in the portraits of Miguel de Cervantes both from ethnographic and historical perspectives. Since 1916 none of the writer's portraits is recognised as a factual representation of him by scholars. This fact was agreed after five decades of debate, when a taxonomy of portraits was published by a historian of the Spanish Royal Academy who was five years being funded by the King and the Government. However, it changed in 2016 when a forgotten portrait of the writer was brought to public opinion. It was originally published in London in 1854 besides a certificate of authenticity written by Louisa Dorothea Stanley, the translator of Persiles and Sigismunda, who said the portrait was owned then by Arthur Aston, a British ambassador whose name was wrongly transcripted by the Spanish historian in his study. Thus the portrait was badly transmitted as fake to society. For its recovery, it was supposed to be part of a memorial exhibition in La Mancha, but both political and cultural authorities rejected it. Debate was opened though through a public mural, a press release and applications to official institutions (Cervantes Institute, Spanish National Library, Senate, Ministries of Culture, Economy and Treasury, Royal Academy of Language, Museo del Prado), that allowed testing the Nara Document from an ethnographic research on authenticity and authority at the country who uses a deliberately known fake portrait of the writer on the Euro coins of 10, 20 and 50 cents to represent its identity.