Borges had a lifelong obsession with Cervantes. He found in Don Quixote a sophisticated game about authorship and the creation of literature beyond which it was impossible to go. Amongst other works, ’Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote’ elaborates on those games, exploring a conception of the author in which there are clear autobiographical resonances. A second dimension is Borges’s mocking of Spanish celebrations of Cervantes and the use made of him by the ideologues of ’Hispanidad’ in the aftermath to the Spanish Civil War. Towards the latter part of his life, Borges offered a view of the author of ’Don Quixote’ and his hero that is more romantic.