Sancho Panza

Sancho Panza is a sixteenth-century Spanish peasant with a family who got roped in to the crazy adventures of Don Quixote. He is a deuteragonist in Don Quixote de La Mancha, a novel written by the real-life Spanish author, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547-1616). 
==Biography==
===Past===
Sancho had previously worked as a servant for Don Quixote before his madness. During that time he was able to get married and raise a daughter until she was old enough to get married. Despite this he did have some ambition to gain governorship which allowed Don Quixote to later invite him to his journeys without much protest from him or his family
===The Second Sally===
After having recovered from his beating and witnessing his books being burnt, Don Quixote decides to hit the road once again, this time with a "squire". He visits Sancho to invite him to an adventure at the promise of governorship which he accepts. There they continued with the adventure which began with the knight attacking windmills which he sees as giants. They then passed by friars who were travelling by a road which was being also being used by a woman. Don Quixote somehow sees the friars as enchanters holding the woman captive and proceeded to attack them. An armed basque decided to challenge the knight and was able to survive his attacks before the woman was able to trick Don Quixote by asking the people involved to "surrender"
The knight and his "squire" decided to stop and rest near a number of goat farmers. To pass time, Don Quixote tells them all a story of "The Golden Age of Man" which explains world peace. Unfortunately, his horse was attempting to mate with the horses of some Galicians who proceeded to beat the knight and his "squire" for not trying to send their horse away. 
Some time later, Don Quixote and Sancho decided to stop by an inn with the former believing it to be a castle. They stay in a room with a muleteer and the knight invites a servant girl to sit next to him, scaring her and provoking the muleteer who smashes the fragile bed Don Quixote was sitting on. He and Sancho got into a fight which they survive before the former uses some "healing balm" which makes them sick. They soon leave but the knight refuses to pay, resulting in his "squire" being flung around while being wrapped in a blanket by various guests. 
During one of their journeys, Don Quixote and Sancho wound up in a crossover chapter where he meets a man named Cardenio from the lost play, "The History of Cardenio". While listening to the man's story, Don Quixote makes the mistake of assuming that Cardenio's lover was in an affair. This enraged him and he proceeded to beat up everyone around him. 
Some time later, the knight decided to write an intricate love letter based on his experience with Cardenio. Sancho however delivers the letter to a priest and a barber. They all agreed to device a scheme to bring Don Quixote home, starting by hiring a woman from Cardenio's story and convincing the knight that the woman is a princess. They all went on a journey where they finally met Cardenio's lover. 
After some sequences of people being reunited, Don Quixote is arrested for freeing a number of galley slave. Luckily, his friends testified for him and he avoided prison with a plead for insanity. He was brought in a cage and at some point during his escort, he was let out. This proved to be a mistake as he wound up fighting some pilgrims and he was brought home to recover. 
===The Third Sally===
Don Quixote recovers after some time and returns to his adventure with Sancho. They have gained fame and were soon tricked by a Duke and a Duchess. Don Quixote in particular was put through various pranks to prove his honor. Sancho soon grows tired of this and convinces the knight that a peasant girl is a cursed princess. This backfires when the Duke and Duchess convinced Don Quixote that the only way to free the princess' curse is to whip the "squire" 3300 times. Some time later, Sancho is given governorship and was able to be an effective and clever ruler before it was revealed to be a ruse which resulted in him being humiliated.
Near the end of the story, Don Quixote is challenged by an old rival, Samson Carrasco which he had beaten in a previous fight. The rival who was once known as Knight of Wood and Knight of Mirrors challenges the knight with a new alias, Knight of the White Moon. Don Quixote was defeated and as part of a tradition, the rival forced his opponent to cease his chivalric activities for an entire year. During this year, Don Quixote regained his sanity and apologized for the harm he has done
==In other media==
===Man of La Mancha===
At least two film versions of "Don Quixote" are scrupulously faithful to the extremely long novel, but most of them change some elements of the story radically, and Aldonza does appear in several of them. In "Man of La Mancha", the famous musical inspired by "Don Quixote", Sancho remains mostly similar to his book version though he does have a different motivation for going along in the adventure with Don Quixote, that being "I Really Like Him", unable to figure out another reason.
Man of La Mancha uses a mere fraction of Don Quixote's adventures in its plot, as do other dramatizations of the novel. (The ballet version of Don Quixote, by Ludwig Minkus, uses only two.) Depending on which film version of Don Quixote one watches, different adventures are included - the novel is nearly 1,000 pages long - but the one most famous, which turns up in nearly every adaptation, is Quixote's attack on the windmills, which he believes to be ferocious giants. Another of his famous adventures is that involving the barber and his shaving basin, which Don Quixote takes to be the miraculous helmet of Mambrino.
==Gallery==
===Novel Illustrations===
File:Don_Quixote_Novel_3.jpg|Don Quixote And Sancho Panza by Louis Anquentin
File:Don_Quixote_Novel_5.png|Quixote's attack on the giants with Sancho being reasonably worried
File:Don_Quixote_Novel_4.jpg|Early example of an "I told you so" moment. Illustration by Gustave Doré
===Statues===
File:Sancho Panza Statue 1.jpg|Bronze statues of Sancho Panza at Lorenzo Coullaut Valera
File:Sancho Panza Statue 2.jpg|Bronze statues of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza at Plaza de España
File:Sancho Panza Statue 3.jpg|Bronze statues of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza at Cervantes Birth Place Museum
==Trivia==
*In the 2015 film, he is played by Horatio Sanz
Category:Book Heroes
Category:Movie Heroes
Category:Live Action Heroes
Category:Sidekicks
Category:Male
Category:Wise
Category:Medieval Heroes
Category:Legendary
Category:Pacifists
Category:Good Vs. Good
Category:Loyal
Category:Neutral Good
Category:Strategists
Category:Liars
Category:Rescuers
Category:Officials
Category:Poor
Category:Voice of Reason