Cid Campeador is the name given in histories, traditions and songs to the most celebrated of Spain's national heroes. His real name was Rodrigo or Ruy Diaz (i.e. "son of Diego"), a Castilian noble by birth. He was born at Burgos about the year 1040. There is so much of the mythical in the history of this personage that hypercritical writers, such as Masdeu, have doubted his existence; but recent researches have succeeded in separating the historical from the romantic.
