WHERE DOES SANCHO COME FROM?

Sancho Panza is literally compared with Gandalin from "Amadis de Gaula", even Cervantes himself brings Gandalin up when Don Quixote defines Sancho Panza, trying to make Sancho understand they are similar characters. First because Gandalin is a midget and Sancho is pictured as a really short person himself, they are both squires, they both talk a lot and most importantly, because Sancho Panza is said to be a comic reflection of squires (the same way Don Quixote is thought to be a comic reflection of knight heroes) mainly from King Arthur´s legends´ literature and Gandalin is one of those squires. Gandalin even emerges as author of a sonet dedicated to Sancho Panza in the preface of the novel.

http://users.ipfw.edu/jehle/deisenbe/reviews/flores.pdf

Sancho Panza scorts Don Quixote from chapter seven of the first part of the novel and from that point on they become undivisible. Sancho was Don Quixote´s neighbour and Cervantes tells us he works the land and he had pigs and sheeps but he is poor and not very intelligent, a perfect hillbilly. He does not own land, he only worked for a couple of "ducados" a month plus food and shelter when working for Tome Carrasco. Laborers who owned the land at the time the novel was written were very different from those who did not own it, they represented most of the people and they were not necessarily poor as we can see when breaking down the character Juan from Quintanar. Sancho´s poverty is what pushes him to leave his family to scort Don Quixote in his adventures. Don Quixote gets told he would need a squire to equal those well-known knights so he offers Sancho to be his squire, Don Quixote used the possibility of conquering land and letting Sancho become governor to convince him. Don Quixote always needed Sancho more than the other way round because Sancho´s role as squire enables Cervantes to justify Cervantes´ speeches because there is a listener in Sancho who prevents Don Quixote from talking on his own sounding crazy. Sancho turns into a tool to enhance Don Quixote all along.

(Leif Sletsjoe. 1961. “Sancho Panza, hombre de bien”. Madrid: Insula.)