Introduction: Metaphor and diaspora

Abstract

The essays collected together in this volume were first presented at an international symposium held at the University of Alcalá, Spain, on 5 November 2010. Thirty kilometres to the northwest of Madrid, the city of Alcalá de Henares is today most famous for being the birthplace of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, creator of one of Western literature’s great immortals, Don Quijote. It is famous too for its university which, founded by Cardinal Cisneros in 1499, was the modern era’s first purpose-built campus of schools and residences for students of higher education, a fact which has earned the city recognition as a UNESCO world heritage site. But the city’s history is also marked by its peculiar involvement in historical processes and events coloured by past diasporas or pregnant with future ones.