Out and About August-September 2022 - issue200

32 | OUT AND ABOUT COSTA BLANCA
The Fiesta is part of the Spanish way of
life and most fiestas have a religious
or historical origin. In Costa Blanca
surrounding areas the local patron saint
and the Moors & Christians are usually
the inspiration for a day off partying. The
celebrations have singing and dancing and
everybody has a jolly good time.
Fiestas are financed in part by the Town
Hall and in part by both local businesses and
the local people themselves.
Each town has a Fiesta to honour their
patron saint. The fiesta in fact wends its way
over 10 days of celebrations. Men and women
wearing colourful traditional costumes
parade through the streets, there are brass
bands, open- dances.
Spain is world renowned for its rich
cultural history, so elegantly celebrated
in the hundreds of different fiestas and
festivals held around the country every year.
Each fiesta is celebrated to the full by eager
townsfolk and tourists alike, with gusto and
fervours enthusiasm, and the Moors and
Christians fiesta is one that is certainly a date
to put in your diary.
Many years ago, in fact over 600 years ago,
Spain was a Muslim country and was known
as Al-Andalus, largely inhabited and ruled by
the Moors who were North African in Origin.
The religious difference of the Moorish
Muslims, in stark contrast the majority of
Christian kingdoms throughout ancient
Europe led to a centuries of long wars, battles
and struggles for ideology and for land.
A long battle was aged against the Muslim
rulers, led by the combined military might of
Aragon and Castile, who sought to capture
Spain from the Muslim Emirate of Granada.
The city was the last outpost of the Moorish
forces and its capture and subsequent
expulsion of the moors brought an end to 780
years of Muslim control in Islamic Iberia.
There then followed a mass expulsion of
the Muslims who were banished to Northern
Africa, with the remaining ones who stayed
behind, forced to convert to Catholicism or
face death. These people were known as the
“Moriscos”.
This is the key and the reason, to all
celebrations of the “moros y cristianos” as
they are known here.