The life of the buscón

Its full title is Historia de la vida del Buscón llamado Don Pablos, example of vagabonds and mirror of stingy. The first version dates from the years of youth of Francisco de Quevedo (around 1603). The author subsequently retouched it several times until its publication in 1626, in Zaragoza. Apparently, the novel arises from his intention to ridicule Luis Pacheco, with whom he had a violent dispute.
El Buscón records the method and theme of the picaresque novel. He constructs a unique story with his singular, brilliant and wasteful conceptist style, full of figures, unusual comparisons and crude descriptions of great expressionist load. His interest is not so much the drawing of the characters as of the circumstances, here ridiculed to the extreme.
The life of the buscón narrates the vain efforts of social ascension of a simple Segovian barber of humble origin. He describes with sarcasm the misfortunes that befall him until his departure for the Indies. There, as noted at the end of the novel, he fared even worse, as will be seen.

“In the second part, because he never improves his state who changes only place and not life and customs.”

Quevedo never wrote the aforementioned second part, but with this short work he closes the cycle of the great Spanish picaresque novels.