El Cantar de Mío Cid, is a literary work based on a real character, Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, who came to be known as El Cid Campeador (Cid comes from the Arabic word sidi , which means lord). The work is anonymous, although some attribute it to a minstrel from Medinaceli. In it, real facts are mixed with facts that are the fruit of the author's imagination, the latter being, unfortunately, the most numerous, turning the work El Cantar de Mío Cid into a literary work that has little to do with the true reality of the character of the cid.
The town of Vivar, in the city of Burgos, was where Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar was born, as the book Las Mocedades del Cid (S. XIV) recounts. The date of his birth is not known, although different historians fix it between the fork that goes from the year 1041 and 1057.
The great philologist Ramón Menéndez Pidal, in his work La España del Cid, in which he studies our character, places him as a hidalgo son of Diego Laínez. While still young , he was left an orphan, for which he shared his education with Sancho, son of Fernando I, King of Castilla y León. Sancho taught him how to use weapons, as well as how to read and write. When he was old enough, he became part of the hosts of Fernando I, by decision of the king himself. When the king died, Sancho and his brother Alfonso entered into a fight. Rodrigo sided with Sancho, his childhood friend, and fought against Afonso, managing to defeat him in some battles. However, these partial victories in the end triumph smiled at Alfonso. So he, knowing Rodrigo's worth as a warrior, decided to forgive him and incorporate him into his army.
After his marriage to Jimena, El Cid went on a raid without the monarch's authorization, for which he was banished, along with his vassals, by the then king, Alfonso VI. Then El Cid had no choice but to find someone to pay him for his arms services, getting the King of Zaragoza, Al- Muqtadir , to accept him to fight on his behalf. He was working on it when he reconciled with King Alfonso and was restored to his former position under Alfonso's orders. But the agreement between the two did not last long, as he was again exiled for disobeying the king when he ordered him to come to meet him in Valencia, at the time that Berenguer Ramón II besieged the city. El Cid ignored Alfonso VI's order and did not go to Valencia.
Before his second banishment, the Cid began his path of arms with only his men, and without any agreement with anyone. He set his goal in the conquest of Valencia, which began in 1093 and ended with the capture of the city a year later.
El Cid Campeador was in Valencia, without leaving it, until his death in the year 1099. He was buried in the Cathedral of Valencia, but in 1102 the city was vacated due to a fire. Then his corpse was sent to the Monastery of San Pedro de Cardeña in Burgos. During the War of Independence, the French took him out of his grave and placed him in a pantheon in the center of Burgos. But the remains of El Cid did not end there, as they still toured, again, the Cardeña Monastery, the Burgos Town Hall and finally the Burgos Cathedral where they rest next to those of his wife Jimena, since 1921.
