La Mosca is one of the great Spanish poems by Miguel de Cervantes, which was created in 1497 and is part of the first part of the Don Quixote Trilogy. The poem has its origins in a famous story about Sancho Panza, who is called to the court of the king of Spain. Cervantes tells the story of how the king had an old woman called La Mosca, who had been a prisoner of his father for many years. She lived on the lowest tier of the city streets with a small number of other people, in the process learning to sing and dance to make a living. However, the king would always send men from the outside court to find her; they would then force her to do the things she had no choice in doing. Eventually she was stripped and sold into slavery to pay off debts that the king owed her.
Panza comes to rescue her and he tells her that she can return to Spain, but she would need to marry another person in order to do so. She accepts and so she and Panza are married. In fact, it is her marriage to Panza, and not her marriage to the king, that is the subject of the poem. Panza tells her that he will marry her if she will marry him, and that she cannot turn him down. La Mosca, however, refuses, and he tells her that he will marry her with or without her consent.
Panza's son dies, and Panza is devastated by the news. This leads her to make a decision that will change her entire life. One night, Panza and her servant go to bed together and when the servant tells Panza that she must marry someone, Panza is horrified, because she does not want to marry anyone. Panza decides that she will marry the King of Spain, and when the time comes, she does so. Panza does not care what the King does, as long as he accepts her as a queen, and makes peace between them. She has no regrets about marrying the king and so she is happy. In this way, La Mosca is a modern day example of how a relationship is made by two people who love each other, even if they cannot be together romantically.
