An attempt to tell the story of Cervantes’ youth with locations all over Spain including Cartagena and Mar Menor, Murcia and Denia.
At Denia in the port they constructed a castle wall, representing the port of Algiers, bedecked with torturees and the mutilated; however, as it was a set, it doesn’t get a mention here.
The scenes shot in Granada, (where it was still economically viable to film in the sumptuous Alhambra palace), took place in the Jardines del Partal, and represented Algeria, where Cervantes was held captive.
He also found time to befriend an Arab General, be tortured, be saved from beheading by popular demand and fall in love with a servant girl who would be killed declaring her undying love for him.
Such are the whimsies of fate.