El Cantar de mio Cid, literally “The Song of my Cid”, or “The Song of my lord” (or El Poema de mio Cid), also known in English as The Poem of the Cid, is the oldest preserved Castilian epic poem.
Based on a true story, it tells of the deeds of the Castilian hero Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar known as El Cid and takes place during the eleventh century, an era of conflicts in the Iberian Peninsula between the Kingdom of Castile and various Taifa principalities of Al-Andalus. It is considered a national epic of Spain.
The linguistic analysis allows the reconstruction of a 12th-century previous text, which Ramón Menéndez Pidal dated circa 1140. Date and authorship are still open to debate
