Alonso de Guillén y Contreras (6 January 1582 - 1645) was a 16th century Spanish criminal, soldier, privateer and knight, in this order. A bane of the Ottoman Empire and a personal friend to Lope de Vega, he has a place in history thanks to his epic if morbid autobiography, Discurso de mi vida, a sort of military version of the Lazarillo de Tormes that remains one of the best chronicles of the time we have notice of. He was one of the inspirations of Arturo Pérez-Reverte's star literary character Alatriste, also appearing himself as a character in the series.
Born in a pauper family with sixteenth children, Alonso's career started out of the gate at the tender age of 13, when he stabbed to death a classmate due in a child fight and managed to frighten all their other classmates into testifying in his favor. However, due to a new incident of the like, he joined the Flanders Army as a scullion, although his service there was short, as he was deceived into joining a group desertion (or so he claims) that traveled to the more comfortable Mediterranean theater against the Ottoman Empire. Contreras joined a privateer crew under captain general Pedro de Toledo Osorio, a distant relative of the (in)famous Duke of Alba, Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, and although never free from crazy incidents, he turned out to be an untapped talent, eventually receiving his own ship at just 19 and becoming a spymaster in the shores of Greece, where he caused all sorts of trouble to the Great Turk. In one of his most colorful feats, he captured the favorite concubine of an important Ottoman, who promised to have Contreras raped by six black men if he ever got his hands on him.
His short temper crashed his career in 1606, however. Contreras had painfully tried to put aside his womanizing ways and marry a rich widow in Sicily, but he discovered she had got herself a lover, so he murdered them both. He returned to Spain to try to refloat his life, finding new love there, but luck escaped him again: his own captain raped and brutally beat his girlfriend, moving Alonso to kill him at the cost of landing in jail. He was freed, but by this point he was sick and tired of everything and decided to Turn to Religion, becoming a Catholic hermit in the Moncayo - where, in a bizarre twist that would feel at home in a Monty Python film, he was arrested, now accused of being the ringleader of a rising Morisco rebellion due to a minor dirty business he was possibly involved with years earlier. Contreras was finally acquitted with the help of the Order of Malta, the most action-oriented of all the orders that routinely fought the Ottomans, and after receiving some royal compensations, he finally re-started his career awhole, returning to the Mediterranean and becoming an knight of the order. Soon he would be in his peak of success, commanding his own ship again.
In 1616, Contreras expanded his operations to the Atlantic, where he was sent to counter English privateering, in this case specifically Walter Raleigh (whose name Contreras amusingly mangles in true Spanish fashion as "Guatarral"), probably during the Englishman's expedition to the Orinoco river. Disguising his three galleons as merchant ships to lure Raleigh's five lighter vesseals, Contreras unloaded on them and managed to kill an English captain, which put the rest to flee. His return to Seville would coincide with an even crazier operation, as he nailed a rescue of a ship filled with gold and silver, for which King Philip IV promised to make him an admiral - of course, without keeping his word. Disappointed, Contreras returned to Italy and became a governor for the Duke of Albuquerque, having the dubous honor of witnessing the 1631 eruption of Mount Vesuvius, although shortly after he was made knight of San Juan de Jerusalén and could retire.
During his time in the court, he befriended Lope de Vega, another knight of San Juan who suggested him to write down his adventurous life. As he finished writing it in 1631 (or maybe 1630), this is the last we know about Contreras, aside from a report of his death fourteen years later.
In fiction
Comic Book- He received a graphic novel in Alberto Pérez Rubio's Alonso de Contreras, soldado de los tercios.
- As mentioned above, he appears as a secondary character in Alatriste.
