Forgotten 400-year-old Spanish book published for the first time - despite the rumour it's cursed

A missing novel, rumoured to be cursed, has been found for the first time 
A missing novel, rumoured to be cursed, has been published for the first time  Credit:  Marie Hattner / EyeEm

A 400-year-old novel charting imperial adventures in Spain’s Golden Age, long believed lost and rumoured to be cursed, has been published for the first time. 

Written by a Malaga-born monk between 1608 and 1615, Historia del Huérfano (The Orphan’s Story) tells the tale of a Granada orphan who travelled to the Spanish empire in the Americas to seek his fortune.

The protagonist spends time among the high society of imperial Peru, visits slave-filled mines in modern day Bolivia and witnesses key historical events such as Sir Francis Drake’s assault on Puerto Rico in 1595. 

The author, Martín de León y Cárdenas, agreed for it to be published in 1621 under the pen name Andrés de León, but the book never made it to print. 

For centuries the 328-page manuscript was thought lost, until it was discovered in 1965 in the New York archives of the Hispanic Society of America.

A string of attempts to publish it then floundered, leading to rumours the mysterious book was cursed. But it is now finally available to readers thanks to the José Antonio de Castro Foundation, which works to preserve classical Spanish literature.

Belinda Palacios, the Peruvian academic who spent two years editing the new publication, said she was repeatedly warned off the project with stories of untimely deaths.

“When I started working on it, a lot of people told me that the book was cursed and that people who start working on it die,” Ms Palacios told The Guardian. 

“I laughed it off but I was a bit apprehensive at the same time.

It’s taken a while because the people who have worked on it have died – one from a strange disease, one in a car accident and another of something else.”

Ms Palacios said the book “transports the reader to the past, in a complete manner”, drawing on experiences of the author, who had himself travelled to Peru, and incorporating historical documents such as a letter from a general who fought Drake in Puerto Rico. 

It is unclear why the original publication was called off, but Ms Palacios suggested that de León, who wrote the manuscript in his 20s, may have feared it could impact an ecclesiastical career that later saw him become the Archbishop of Palermo in the Vice-Royalty of Sicily.

It may be no accident that in the recovered manuscript, one of the darkest chapters in the protagonist's adventure is missing two pages.

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