Cervantes began writing Don Quixote while imprisoned after the Armada

Evidence

There is no link in England between the Armada campaign and any literary work as clear as one we can find in Spain. According to the accepted story a maimed veteran of Lepanto, a minor poet, in the confusing weeks before the Armada sailed from Lisbon, got his accounts of collections he was making for the fleet so embroiled that nobody could tell whether he was trying to cheat the Crown or not, and in due time he was sent to prison until somebody could straighten out his books. In his enforced leisure he found time to begin to write Don Quixote. — Garrett Mattingly, The Defeat of the Spanish Armada, 894

Categorization

• FICTION: A perfect origin story for a character — genius emerging from bureaucratic misfortune.
• QUESTION: Verify the Cervantes-Don Quixote prison story against modern scholarship; it may be more legend than fact.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Garrett Mattingly, The Defeat of the Spanish Armada, 894