Moors and Christians: the fiesta event

This is the second part of a blog about Moors and Christians or Moros y Cristianos. The first part is called Moors and Christians: the real thing and it gives the history behind this event. This blog is about putting on funny costumes and parading through the streets.

The Moors and Christians festivals in all the towns have their own peculiarities. The costumes can be of varying styles, the individual events that make up the whole can be different, there can be different names for something more or less the same, the scale can vary enormously, the duration can also vary, the historical setting for the events may be different and even the type of music the accompanying bands play can have a local dimension. Nonetheless, most have essentially the same principal events. That said please bear in mind that this account has to be generalised and so is not always strictly accurate.

The event is, in essence the re-enactment of a fight between two ideologies, Muslim and Christian, so the starting point is that there are two factions and the final victory always goes to the Christians. Each of the two sides is made up of groups which are usually called comparsas though filae or fila is also relatively common. Often families will identify with a particular comparsa, generation after generation, joining the same group. 

In any town that celebrates Moors and Christians you'll see buildings of all shapes and sizes identified as the headquarters for these groups. The ones with crescent moons, crossed scimitars and Arabic script are Moors and the ones with coats of arms and crosses are Christians. The groups have names like Almogávares, Moros Beberes, Ballesteros, Zingaros, Realistas, Piratas, Mudéjares, Flamencos, Abencerrajes and so on. Each of these differently named comparsas is a sort of social club with their ultimate goal being to get their comparsa out onto the street during the fiesta with the best uniforms and best accessories and the best everything else. Along the way the participants won't forget to have a bit of fun and to move quite a lot of alcohol.

It's usually pretty easy to tell whether you're watching Moors or Christians – beards, curved swords, harem pants, veils and the like for Muslims and chain mail, big broadswords and silk dresses for the Christians. Within the Christian ranks there are often spoon, or pencil carrying, students. I have no idea why they carry spoons nor do I know why students are Christian when the Moors were famous for their scholarship. There are, commonly, pirates, contrabandistas (smugglers) and sometimes sailors too. Given the one time fame of Barbary pirates I always expect these ship going types to be Muslims but I've seen them on both sides of the divide.

How the two sides are organised varies from town to town and event to event. There is always one one overall boss for the Christian side and another for the Moors. These chiefs are usually chosen by some sort of votation or there may be some sort of rotation within the various comparsas. This overall commander is sometimes called captain, sometimes a general and sometimes king or queen. The individual comparsas usually have some sort of figurehead too and any number of sub officials such as squadron chiefs and flag bearers. There are often events that are to do with this hierarchy - presentation of flags, naming of chiefs etc.

I think all the Moors and Christians festivals have a Catholic procession somewhere among the events. Usually the whole festival will be to the glory of some saint or other and said saint will get moved to the parish church escorted by the various comparsas.

So these religious and protocol are a part of the Moros y Cristianos fiesta but the big thing, the popular thing, the crowd pleasers are the desfiles, the parades. If you're trying to decipher a programme in Spanish be careful of the difference between procesión, which is a religious parade, and words like entrada, desfile and cabalgata which are the spectacular and secular parades. Typically the most spectacular events are the Moorish and Christian entradas, the entrances. Normally the entradas are two separate events though in some smaller festivals Christians and Moors may parade together. The costumes are often spectacular, especially the Muslim ones, and there may be all sorts of extras like war chariots, horses and fire breathing dragons. 

Within the entrada each each comparsa will divide its ranks into groups of 10-14 people called an escuadra. These people will wear matching outfits and be led by a squadron chief. As they pass by you the squadron chief will be inciting the crowd to cheer. Each comparsa will have at least one musical band and often several bands helping it to march along. The music for Moors and Christians often includes a style of music typical to the town or region.

The other big event, apart from the entrada, is the embassy, la embajada. An embassy is deputation or mission sent by one ruler or state to another. It usually takes place either by a mockup castle or, if the town happens to have a real castle, there. It's a play in two parts and it has a prologue which is sometimes called the estafeta, a sort of preamble to the embassy, the first delegation before the embassy. Only a few characters are involved in the embajada, the chiefs of the Christians and Muslims, the ambassador and a few sentries from either side - again there are lots of variations so sometimes there are armed infantry squads or maybe riders on horseback. The Muslims request the surrender of the town, the Christians say not on your life, and so the battle begins.  

The resultant battle is often the chance to use some incredibly loud and old fashioned looking guns called arquebuses, I think that these sort of events are often referred to as alardos. In some places, where the guns include canons, the event is called a guerrillera. If you go to see a battle take ear plugs. The Muslims win the first battle and take the castle. Later there is a second embassy, this time the roles are reversed and this time it's the Christians who win, for ever and ever. 

As well as the entradas of the Moors and Christians there are other events which may or may not happen in every town. One, which is a little confusingly named, is the Entrada de la Bandas. This is a sort of introduction to all of the groups often without their full regalia. I think in some places this sort of event is called a retreta.

These parades only happen once a year in each town. When they happen depends on local tradition so there are parades all year around. I've noticed that the mid year celebrations are becoming more common. Six months after the date of the main event there will be some sort of celebration and some low key events.

And now, I think, that's Moors and Christians done to death!

Moors and Christians: the real thing

A friend asked me a very simple question about Moors and Christians, the Moros y Cristianos festivals. What I thought would be a quick and easy blog now stretches over two parts. My usual disclaimer. This is not an academic piece so it is not 100% accurate.

Moor is a slightly derogatory term for someone from North Africa. The term Moor doesn't really include Arabs, who come from the Arabian Peninsula, but most Spaniards don't let a little technicality like that get in the way and Moor gets used indiscriminately to include Arabs and, sometimes, with the wider significance of Muslim. Christians means Roman Catholics. It's relatively common for Spaniards to think that Methodists Episcopalians, Calvinists etc. aren't Christian. 

Moors and Christians are parades and events that take part in several Spanish regions, Murcia, Castilla la Mancha, Andalucia and Extremadura, but they are particularly associated with the Valencian Community and the area in which we live. They are a stylised re-enactment of the struggle between Muslims and Christians to control most of what is, today, Spain. 

The basic plot is this. By April 711 the Romans had left “Spain” and the Christian Visigoths were in charge. There was a bit of a squabble in the Visigothic royal family about who would be the next king and one of the potential rulers invited some Moorish troops over from North Africa to give him a hand against other pretenders. The Moors weren't that keen but when they did finally cross the straits of Gibraltar (which name comes from one of the invaders) they routed all the local Visigoths in double quick time. The invitation had been based on the premise that, loaded with booty, the Moors would use the return part of their ticket to North Africa but they must have liked the beaches, or something, and decided to stay. That was bad news for the ruling Visigoths.

The Moorish army, of about 10,000 swept on to capture the Goth capital, Toledo. The bloke in charge was called Tariq, (well he wasn't really but that's he nearest we get with our alphabet) and the next season another Moorish army crossed the Straits commanded by Tariq's boss, Musa. The two men and their armies met up in Toledo and then pushed on up North. The locals didn't put up much resistance and, within ten years, and never with more than 40,000 troops, the Moors had taken nearly the whole of Spain.

Now comes the "We shall fight on the beaches ..... we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender" bit. It's not true but it's a good story and it's a story that most Spaniards like.  It's 722 and the Moors are mopping up the remnants of the Visigothic army that has fallen in with some local resistance fighters led by a minor warlord called Pelayo. Pelayo gives the Moors a sound thrashing at a battle in Covadonga in Asturias. The Reconquest has begun. It's finally time for a Christian comeback.

The truth of it is that, if Pelayo ever existed, this was just a minor skirmish at best. The Moors were, in reality, stopped by Christians at the Battle at Tours in France (just 490 miles from London). There, in 732, Charles Martel, who was King of the Franks, stopped the Moors dead in their tracks and sent them scurrying back to the Iberian Peninsula and the land they called al Andalus.

From then on in it all gets really complicated. The children's history book version has the Christians slowly pushing the Muslims out - a bit like that line in the Harry Ford film Air Force One  where he kicks the nasty terrorist off  the plane to the immortal line "Get off my plane!". Actually it was hundreds of years of local rulers and warlords struggling for more land, more taxes and the booty of battle. Warriors and politicians on all sides making, and breaking, deals to suit their own purposes. You've probably heard of the 11th Century el Cid, even if you don't know who Charlton Heston is, he's a big Spanish hero though the truth of it is that he changed sides over and over again. The two cultures, Christian and Muslim, or three if you count the sizeable Jewish contingent, lived and worked side by side. That only fell apart when the Christians finally took control. At that point the Moors were given the alternative of converting to Christianity or getting out. The Jews were kicked out and the inquisition was set up to make sure that Christians toed the line (and ceded their wealth to the Church).  

The other complication was that there were, for most of the time of the Moorish occupation, two big power blocks in Spain. The crowns of Aragon and Castile. Aragon is sort of top right on the Iberian Peninsula (Catalonia, Aragon, Valencia and the Balearics) and Castile was most of the rest that wasn't Portugal. Any current day echoes there?

So, we've got two big blocks of Christians, that don't always get on, and a lot of Muslim held land. The frontiers are a bit elastic. Around our part of the world we have lots of castles. These frontier fortresses changed hands over and over. At any one  time they may just as well have been Castilians versus Aragonese as Christians versus Muslims. It was a product of both time and geography. It's one of the reasons why some towns around here are principally Castilian speaking and others are Valencian speaking. The Aragonese held towns speak Valencian and the Castilian towns don't. Of course in the end Ferdinand (of Aragon) married Isabella (of Castile), or the other way, to become the Catholic Monarchs thus uniting the two kingdoms. Together they were powerful enough to take the last Moorish stronghold of Granada, in 1492, and finally claim the Christian victory. That's the same year that they paid for Cristóbal Colón's (Christopher Columbus to you and me) adventure to find a new route to the spice rich Indies. 

Moors and Christians

There are so many Moors and Christians parades in the province that we rather take them for granted. But, with having a houseguest last week we roused ourselves from in front of the telly and went to watch the entry of the Moors in the town of Novelda.

Novelda has around 25,000 inhabitants and with that number they mounted a parade that lasted over three hours. The events celebrate the defeat of the Moors, the Muslim invader, by the home grown Christiams but it always seems to us that the Moorish groups have more members and better costumes. Each year the comparsas, that's the names for each group, prepare for the festival from one event to the next. Each comparsa has several sub groups that wear the same or a similar costume; these subgroups traditionally walk shoulder to shoulder through the streets. The costumes are incredibly detailed and must cost a fortune to produce - in fact there must be a whole industry built on pointed shoes, scimitars and bejewelled turbans. Moorish men used to black up but that is no longer politically correct and the cigars that they used to smoke seem to have gone too. Nonetheless the beards, fake or grown for the occasion, and the pot bellies remain. Women used to be an embellishment, usually dancing girls, but nowadays they often walk shoulder to shoulder with the men dressed in similar costumes or they form separate lines carrying weaponary of one sort or another.

Each comparsa hires a band for the parades. The bands come from all over the province. The noteworthy feature is the percussion section with huge "kettle drums" mounted on trollies and the music has a similar quality whatever the tune.

As well as the bands and the lines there are any number of variations. Horses canter and gallop in the spaces between lines often rearing up or doing that strange stepping walk, fire eaters do their thing and there are lots of dance troupes. In Novelda we had a group of maybe thirty people going by with hawks on their hands with the hawks flying to lures from time to time. There are several floats too, Often just with tiered seating for the "Carnival Queens" and their courtiers but with an infinite variety from gigantic mechanical beasts through to fantastic constructions and mobile platforms for living statues and other performances.

It was hard work just watching them go by for so long, tough on the feet and legs and with the temperature at midnight still at 36ºC. We thought our vantage point in the doorway of a bar had important strategic advantages! If it was hard work watching imagine what it must have been like for the men and women walking in heavy costumes, dancing the whole route orfilling their mouths with kerosene to blow fire time after time after time.