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By Root 1208 0

Foreign travelers rightly recognized the Iberian peninsula as somewhere distinct, for reasons that they often ascribed to its “Moorish” and Jewish antecedents. Often, ironically, the literary stereotypes that they applied to Spaniards were those that Old Christians had fixed on the Moriscos. Long after the last “Moors” and Jews had gone, these images and tropes persisted. The Spanish state appeared to some a miracle, a model and ordered Christian state, a pattern for utopia. For others it was just the opposite, a dystopia. Whether the expulsions of the Jews and Moriscos were utopian or dystopian depended upon your inclination or perspective.

However, images and language never remain static. At some point after the expulsion of the Moriscos from Granada in the 1570s and the re-population of the empty towns and villages with Old Christians from the north, fiestas of Moros y Cristianos (“Moors” and Christians) began to appear in these communities. Gradually, also, as the “Moor” became a distant and near-mythical figure, the menacing Turk became the dominant and threatening image of the infidel.49 Sometimes they figured together in the fiesta. In 1533 the Toledo celebrations of the landing of Charles V at Barcelona had centered on a pageant around “a very high tower [made of wood and plaster] filled with ‘Moors’ completely dressed in the ‘Moorish’ style and inside the Grand Turk defending the castle.” Moors and the Grand Turk were roundly defeated and paraded in chains through the town, carrying their banners. This pageant had a clear and direct message of immediate import, but the ceremonial of Christian triumph over Islam survived after its central purpose had been forgotten. To this day, the town of Baza celebrates the Cascamorras on September 6 every year. Men stained brown from head to foot roam the town, while people hit them, shouting that they have come to steal the image of the Virgin. The origin of this ritual is shrouded in mystery; some have suggested (a little improbably) that it recalls the harsh intolerance of the Almohades in the thirteenth century. Even the name—Cascamorras—is obscure. However, Baza was a great victory for the Catholic Kings in the war for Granada, and Cascamorras can easily be read as “smashing the Moors” (cascar los moros).

There are similar celebrations all over what was once Al-Andulus. Although the scripts for these increasingly elaborate events date from the nineteenth century, the “Moros” and “Cristianos” appeared in festivals long before then. At Alcoy in Valencia, St. George’s Day in 1668 was marked with processions through the streets, with some men dressed up as “Christian ‘Moors’ ” and others as “Christian Christians,” in costumes of the previous century. In the stylized battle that concluded the celebration, it was no surprise that the Christians once more proved invincible. The purpose of these ceremonials was not so much to show the superiority of Christianity to Islam, but to

present a scene of ideal unity and an image of the greatness of the city: the “Moors” were no longer presented as frightening or ridiculous figures … The “Moors” in the fiestas are not savage warriors but noble gentlemen: their costumes are almost always more spectacular than those of the Christians, and they appear majestic.50

Over time, these celebrations became increasingly complex and spectacular, with defined roles assigned to particular districts, churches, or brotherhoods. But in the villages and small towns of the Alpujarras, they retained their original form and purpose for much longer. In Valor, where one of the leaders of the second war of the Alpujarras was born, the emphasis was on Christian benevolence. The “Moorish” king offered his sword to the Christian king and knelt at his feet. The Christian replied:

Moors, among Christians clemency

Lives in our hearts, it fills our soul;

Although you are conquered, I set you free

Take your sword and arise.51

There had been no scene of honor and clemency in Valor in 1568. It was a bloody battle for a starving town, where 200 Moriscos died in