Miguel de Cervantes

Cervantes lost the use of his left hand at the battle of Lepanto, spent five years enslaved in Algiers after pirates took his ship, and worked as a tax collector who twice went to prison over the accounts. He published the first part of "Don Quixote" at fifty-seven.

He had asked to be buried at the convent whose order had paid his ransom from Algiers. The exact spot was lost when the building was rebuilt; a search in 2015 found bones in a crypt that are probably, but not certainly, his.