Intense scholarly debate has raged over the question of the identity of the Cid's author. Critics are divided into two camps, the "traditionalists" and the "individualists." The former group, led by Ramon Men6ndez Pidal, believes that the poem was composed as an oral composition soon after the historical Cid's death, and was written in a manuscript only later, thus negating the importance of the idea of a single author for the poem. The "individualists," on the other hand, (championed most recently by Colin Smith) insist that a single, brilliant author wrote the poem in 1207. Some critics point to Per Abbad, the name that appears at the end of the poem, as the author, although the text states that this personage "wrote" the text (escrivo), indicating that he was the copyist rather than the author. Opinion on the subject is so divided that individualists tend to...