Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes gets formal burial after 400 years

Spain has given its greatest writer, Miguel de Cervantes, a formal burial some 400 hundred years after his death, unveiling a funeral monument holding bone remains believed to include those of the author of Don Quixote.

Madrid Mayor Ana Botella placed a laurel wreath at the foot of the monument in a Madrid convent on Thursday in a ceremony that included military honours because Cervantes had also been a soldier for Spain.

The bones were unearthed this year by experts after a near-yearlong search at the convent where Cervantes was known to have been buried in 1616.

Construction work over the centuries made it difficult to ascertain exactly where his bones lay and spurred the search so that the author could finally be given a properly sign-posted burial site.