The miseries of 16th century Spanish society portrayed by the misfortunes of a rogue.
The life of Lazarillo de Tormes and his fortunes and adversities are the inaugural work of the picaresque novel. Narrated in the first person, its protagonist is a rogue who uses satire to portray all social classes. An anonymous work, perhaps the author decided to hide his identity for fear of the reprisals that the social and religious criticism of his story could bring him. If so, he was probably right: in 1559 the novel was included in the Index of the Inquisition and in 1573, when it came to light again, it was censored.
Scholars have shuffled different names that could be behind this picaresque novel: the Friar Juan de Onega from the San Jerome Order, Sebastián de Horozco, Diego Hurtado de Mendoza and Alfonso de Valdés (the latter is the option defended by philologist Rosa Navarro Durán, to the point that in the 2016 Alianza Editorial in its edition dropped the “Anonymous” on the cover to attribute authorship to this humanist born in Cuenca at the end of the 15th century).
