DON QUIXOTE - by far the most famous book in Spanish literature - was originally intended by Cervantes as a skit on traditional popular ballads, but he also parodied the romances of chivalry. As a result he produced one of the most entertaining adventure stories of all time and created, in Don Quixote and his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, two of the greatest characters in fiction. By 1615, when he died 'old, a soldier, a gentleman and poor!' his work was already famous both in English and in French, and is now regularly nominated as the world's greatest work of fiction.