Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies

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Rejecting al-Andalus, exalting the Reconquista:

historical memory in contemporary Spain

Alejandro García-Sanjuán

To cite this article: Alejandro García-Sanjuán (2018) Rejecting al-Andalus, exalting the
Reconquista: historical memory in contemporary Spain, Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies,
10:1, 127-145, DOI: 10.1080/17546559.2016.1268263

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/17546559.2016.1268263

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JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL IBERIAN STUDIES, 2018
VOL. 10, NO. 1, 127–145
https://doi.org/10.1080/17546559.2016.1268263

Rejecting al-Andalus, exalting the Reconquista: historical

memory in contemporary Spain
Alejandro García-Sanjuán
Departamento de Historia, Geografía y Antropología, Universidad de Huelva, Huelva, Spain

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

This paper focuses on the survival of a form of historical memory in Received 18 November 2015
modern Spain that dates back to the nineteenth century. The Accepted 30 November 2016
prevailing form of Spanish national identity at that time was
KEYWORDS
completely dependent on Catholicism; the medieval Iberian past al-Andalus; Reconquista;
was understood as a struggle of national liberation against Spain; Spanish national
invading Muslims, culminating in a final Christian victory in 1492. identity; Spanish nationalism;
This approach generated an exclusionary vision of al-Andalus as National Catholicism;
alien to Spanish identity, expressed through the notion of historical memory
“Reconquista,” which reached its peak during the Franco
dictatorship, the heyday of National Catholic ideology. Although
the idea of Reconquista lost its historiographical hegemony after
the arrival of democracy in 1978, recent events show that, despite
its strong ideological connotations, or perhaps because of them, it
remains the key concept in defining the medieval period within
the most conservative sectors of academia, politics, and the media.

Introduction
The concept of historical memory can be understood as the set of ideas about the past that
exists in a given society. These ideas are never univocal; multiple versions of historical
memory may come to diverge radically. In Spain, perhaps the most eloquent example is
that of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). In 2007, the Socialist Government led by
José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero enacted the so-called “Law of Historical Memory,”1
which established the obligation to recover the remains of those executed during the
war, as well as to provide financial compensation to those who suffered political repression
under the Franco dictatorship. Yet the notion of “historical memory” has a much broader
meaning and encompasses earlier eras, including the Middle Ages, which in Spain have
unique characteristics that set it apart from the historical experience of some other Euro-
pean nations. The existence of al-Andalus, an Islamic-dominated territory in Iberia
between 711 and 1492, has been one of the most problematic elements of Spanish collec-
tive historical memory.
During the nineteenth century, two opposing historical paradigms about al-Andalus
within the general framework of the history of Spain were developed. The first was

CONTACT Alejandro García-Sanjuán sanjuan@uhu.es

1
“Ley 52/2007, de 26 de diciembre, por la que se reconocen y amplían derechos y se establecen medidas en favor de
quienes padecieron persecución o violencia durante la guerra civil y la dictadura.” Boletín Oficial del Estado (BOE) 310
(27 December 2007).
© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
128 A. GARCÍA-SANJUÁN

based on the notion of “Reconquista,” and entailed the assertion of the total incompatibil-
ity between Spain and al-Andalus. The second, which arose largely in reaction to the first,
is based on the notion of “Muslim Spain,” and affirms the need to integrate al-Andalus
into national history.2 Despite the divergent nature of their postulates, these views share
two elements. First, they stem from the same source: Spanish nationalist historiographical
thinking. Second, they are both based on myths, preconceptions, prejudices, and ana-
chronisms. Notwithstanding their deeply misleading nature, both have survived to the
present day. As has been correctly pointed out, “some of Spain’s current historiographical
debates are in fact a legacy of unresolved contradictions from the nineteenth century.”3
This article will focus on the exclusionary view of al-Andalus associated with the notion
of Reconquista, which has had a steady historiographical, ideological, and political influ-
ence in Spain since the nineteenth century. As John Tolan has pointed out, “the notion of
reconquista goes to the heart of the problem of Spanish historical identity.”4 I will first
trace the origins of the traditionalist narrative about medieval Iberia, which extols the
Reconquista as the birth of Spanish nationhood and excludes al-Andalus from this
national identity. However, the central aim of my study is the persistence of this phenom-
enon, not only in academia, but in politics and media as well.

Reconquista: the origins and development of the rejection of al-Andalus

Nineteenth-century nationalist thinking brought about a radical change in the way of
understanding the past in Europe. With the triumph of liberalism, the right of sovereignty
was attributed to the nation. The new political configuration of the nation required a his-
torical role commensurate with its new function, stimulating unprecedented changes in
historiography. In Spain as in other European countries, different visions of national iden-
tity emerged, linked to different political ideologies.5 The idea of the total exclusion of al-
Andalus from Spanish history was widely diffused among conservatives, who were fully
committed to the idea of Catholicism as the key element shaping Spanish national identity.
This principle was first affirmed in the 1812 Constitution, which was the birth certifi-
cate of the Spanish nation as a political concept and which stated that Catholicism was the
only faith that Spaniards might legally profess. After a short period of religious freedom
established by the Constitution of 1869 (art. 21), the Catholic faith was re-imposed as
the official religion in 1876 (art. 11); this remained the case until the dawn of the
Second Republic in 1931. Therefore, between 1812 and 1931, Spain was a confessional
State whose laws established Catholicism as the official religion. After the end of the
Second Republic (1931–1936), a brief interlude during which Spain was a secular state,
Franco’s dictatorship restored Catholicism to its traditional status.
The role played by Catholicism during this period was not only political, but also had
important social and ideological expressions and a decisive influence on the new nation-
alist way of understanding the past. A cohesive ideology based on the principle of the
indissoluble unity between Spanish national identity and the Catholic faith spread

2
García-Sanjuán, “Al-Andalus en la historiografía del nacionalismo españolista (siglos XIX–XXI),” 65–104.
3
Manzano and Pérez-Garzón, “A Difficult Nation?” 274.
4
Tolan, “Using the Middle Ages,” 331.
5
The best study on this issue is Álvarez Junco, Spanish Identity.
 JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL IBERIAN STUDIES 129

among conservative social sectors.6 No one better expressed this idea than Marcelino
Menéndez Pelayo (1856–1912), a scholar who occupied the highest academic positions
in the country (head of the National Library and the Academy of History, among
others) and a conservative politician who was also a member of the Spanish congress.
Menéndez Pelayo, in one of his best-known works, Historia de los heterodoxos españoles
(1880–1882), formulated a definition of the Spanish past that eloquently affirms the core
principle of National Catholicism: “Spain, evangelizer of half the world. Spain, hammer of
heretics, light of Trent, sword of Rome, cradle of Saint Ignatius (…). That is our greatness
and our unity, we have no other.”7
If Spain was, therefore, the quintessence of Catholicism, al-Andalus could hardly be
understood as part of its national identity. Rather, it would be understood as alien to
the Spanish nation. Nineteenth-century historian Francisco-Javier Simonet, one of the
leading Spanish Arabists of the time, affirmed that “the Spanish nation succumbed in
the early eighth century, falling under the yoke of the Muslims. Since then, she continued
to suffer for about eight centuries.”8 Simonet typified Spanish ultra-Catholic historiogra-
phy. Indeed, he was so closely identified with Carlism, the most radical strain of Spanish
Catholicism, that when he died in 1897 the Carlista newspaper El siglo futuro wrote that
“his soul has been always in love with God and Spain.”9 Like the overwhelming majority of
contemporary Spanish Arabists and historians, Simonet believed that the Islamic conquest
was a devastating “national catastrophe.”10 This was also the case, for example, of Eduardo
Saavedra, the author of the first academic monograph in Spanish on the Islamic conquest,
published in 1892.11 The almost unanimous characterization of the origin of al-Andalus as
an “invasion” delegitimized al-Andalus as a facet of national history.
Within the narrative created within the ideological framework of National Catholicism,
the “catastrophe” of 711 was instead represented as an opportunity – provided by Divine
Providence – for the Spanish nation to demonstrate its determination to achieve reunifi-
cation. This idea was expressed through the neologism “Reconquista,” which displaced an
earlier notion of restauración (restoration).12 This change in historiographical vocabulary
marked a new way of understanding the medieval Iberian past; opposition to Muslims was
now framed as a “struggle of national liberation.”13 The idea of Reconquista soon became
an effective ideological tool for building Spanish national identity. As noted by Eduardo
Manzano, this concept generated the image of the Muslim as a mere interloper whose
presence was illegitimate from the start, and whose expulsion was therefore mandatory.14
The exclusion of al-Andalus from Spanish national identity was widespread at the
beginning of the twentieth century. This is evident, for example, in the work of José

6
Following Botti (Cielo y dinero, 31), Spanish National Catholic ideology is rooted in the conservative reaction against the
Enlightenment and the French Revolution as well as in the revolt against the Napoleonic occupation of Spain in 1808.
7
Cited in Marco Sola, “El catolicismo identitario en la construcción de la idea de nación española.” 111.
8
Simonet, Historia, I, 1.
9
García-Sanjuán, La conquista islámica de la Península Ibérica, 40.
10
Simonet, Historia, I, 14 y 35.
11
Saavedra, Estudio, 1.
12
De Ayala, “La Reconquista,” forthcoming, mentions a Latin text from the late twelfth century that, referring to King
Alfonso II of Asturias (r. 791–842), says “maximam enim partem Hispanie recunquisierat.” (I thank the author for allowing
me to cite his unpublished work.) But, in spite of this evidence of the use of the idea of “reconquering” in the medieval
vocabulary, the notion of Reconquista, as it would be understood from the nineteenth century onward, should be con-
sidered a neologism, given its strong nationalist overtones.
13
Ríos Saloma, La Reconquista.
14
Manzano, “La construcción histórica del pasado nacional,” 53.
130 A. GARCÍA-SANJUÁN

Ortega y Gasset (1883–1955), a great admirer of German culture who had been educated
in Germany between 1905 and 1907. For Ortega y Gasset, the influence of the Germanic
people in shaping European national identities, including that of Spain, was decisive. In
España invertebrada (1921), his historical meditation about the origins of Spanish identity,
Ortega questioned “how something that lasted eight centuries can be called Reconquista,”
but nonetheless argued that Arabs had not constituted “an essential ingredient in the
genesis of our nationality.”15
Despite Ortega’s hesitation in this regard, the historiographical discourse of “Recon-
quista” would reach its peak just two decades later, during the Franco regime (1939–
1975), the period of National Catholicism’s greatest influence in Spain. The concept of
Reconquista was in fact the key for understanding the National Catholic vision of the his-
torical development of Spanish national identity. The Spanish Catholic Church had fully
supported Franco from the beginning of his rebellion against the Republican government,
and had baptized his coup d’etat in 1936 a “crusade” against Marxism and atheism. During
the dictatorship and in the general framework of a Catholic and imperial exaltation of the
Spanish national past, forms of historical memory associated with the concept of Recon-
quista became more entrenched. The dictator himself was defined as a “caudillo de la
nueva Reconquista” [leader of the new Reconquista] in a famous 1937 poem by Manuel
Machado.16 Ten years later, on the occasion of the eighth anniversary of the Victory (1
April 1947), the newspaper ABC, under a picture of Franco that spanned the front
page, again appealed to the notion of Reconquista to glorify the triumph of the dictator:
Without General Franco, perhaps Spain, besieged by Marxism, never would have been the
same free nation that began to emerge twelve centuries ago during the Reconquista. It
was, in effect, another Reconquista, based on the force of heroism against a foreign enemy.17

The official symbolism of the Francoist State revealed the new regime’s identification
with the Reconquista through the adoption of elements from the monarchy of the Catholic
Kings (r. 1474–1504). These included the Eagle of Saint John and the yoke and arrows in
the new national coat of arms, the latter being a symbol already used by the Falange, the
main Spanish fascist political party. Ferdinand and Isabella represented not only the cul-
mination of the victory over Islam, with the conquest of Granada, but the beginning of the
so-called “evangelization of America.” They were, therefore, the highest symbol of the
completion of the Reconquista and the starting point of the Spanish empire.
While Francoist propaganda happily identified the “caudillo” and his coup d’etat with
the Crusades, the Reconquista and its heroes (particularly Pelagius18 and El Cid19), aca-
demic historiography continued to cling firmly to the principles established in the

15
Ortega y Gasset, España invertebrada, 129 and 140.
16
The poem was included in his book Las horas de oro (1938).
17
“Sin el General Franco, España, asediada por el marxismo del puño cerrado, acaso no hubiera podido nunca volver a ser
aquella nación libre que empezó a resurgir, hace doce siglos, en la Reconquista. Fue, en efecto, otra Reconquista, arran-
cada, a fuerza de heroísmo, al enemigo exterior.”
18
In Spanish “Pelayo,” first King of Asturias (d. 737) and supposedly the first Christian ruler who defeated the Muslims in
Iberia (in the Battle of Covadonga). It is worth noting that “pelayos” was the name of the infantry in Requetés, a Carlist
paramilitary organization that played a significant role in the Spanish Civil War on Franco’s side. Between 1936 and 1938,
“Pelayos” was the title of the children’s magazine published by the Junta Nacional Carlista de Guerra. After 1939 it
changed its name to “Flechas y Pelayos,” which was published until 1949 under the direction of Friar Justo Pérez de
Urbel. See Vázquez de Parga, Los comics del franquismo.
19
In this particular case, see Peña Pérez, “La sombra del Cid,” 155–77, and Gómez Moreno, “El Cid y los héroes de antaño.”
 JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL IBERIAN STUDIES 131

previous century. This trend is clear in the written production of two of the major
Spanish historians of the twentieth century, Ramón Menéndez Pidal and Claudio
Sánchez-Albornoz, who represented the most traditional strain of Spanish nationalism.
A disciple of Menéndez Pelayo, Ramón Menéndez Pidal (1869–1968) was one of the great-
est proponents of the Reconquista as a collective project of national liberation, as he wrote
in 1959:20
The free and pure religious spirit saved in the North was what gave encouragement and
national sense to the Reconquista. Without it, without its powerful firmness, Spain would
despair of resisting and would have been stripped of its national identity, Islamized like all
other provinces of the Roman Empire south and east of the Mediterranean.

The chief proponent of the traditional notion of Reconquista, however, was Sánchez-
Albornoz (1893–1984), a Republican exile who spent most of his life in Argentina, far
from any personal or institutional relationship with the Franco dictatorship. He wrote
his best-known work (España, un enigma histórico, 1957) as a response to the ideas of
Américo Castro – another exiled Republican – who in 1948 had argued that the origin
of Spanish national identity was linked to the coexistence (convivencia) of three cultures
(Muslim, Christian, and Jewish) during the Middle Ages.21
Sánchez-Albornoz emphatically affirmed the profound Spanishness of renowned
Andalusi authors and scientists. These included, for example, the Cordoban polymath
Ibn Hazm (d. 456 h/1064), characterized as “the Moorish link in the chain that binds
Séneca with Unamuno.”22 He also showed great pride in “the wonderful Arab-Andalusian
civilization, where glass was invented and flight attempted.”23 But, in his view, the virtue of
al-Andalus it was only because it was another, Muslim, historical expression of an eternal
Spanish identity.24
The simultaneous engagement of Sánchez-Albornoz both with the ideas of Reconquista
and Muslim Spain represents an evident contradiction that, at the same time, reveals the
depth of his nationalist convictions. Though Sánchez-Albornoz never showed any aware-
ness of this contradiction, he openly expressed a preference for the concept of “Recon-
quista” towards the end of his life. In De la Andalucía islámica a la de hoy, published
shortly before his death, he defines the Reconquista, and the subsequent conquest of
America “as Spain’s great, divinely-ordained mission”:25
I am used to hearing those who stupidly reject applying the name Reconquista to the long
centuries between the Battle of Covadonga and the surrender of Granada (…). Without
the Reconquista, our modern history would be inexplicable. It is because this great adventure
affirmed our national talent that we conquered America and were the sword of God over the
earth.

20
Menéndez Pidal, Los españoles, 56. On this author see Glick, “Menéndez Pidal, Ramón,” 799–800.
21
Castro was also one of the first to express criticism towards the Reconquista, calling into question the idea of historical
continuity that some wanted to express through this concept: “The Spain that was to be reconquered starting in the
twelfth century was different to that of the eighth century even in its geographical names, which were either Arabic
or pronounced in Arabic.” See Castro, España, 350.
22
Sánchez-Albornoz, Del Islam de España y el Occidente, 111–13.
23
Sánchez-Albornoz, Estudios polémicos, 299: “la maravillosa civilización arabigoandaluza, en que llegó a inventarse el cristal
y se intentó volar.”
24
In the words of Rodríguez Mediano, the idea of Muslim Spain consisted of “a de-Islamisation of al-Andalus in favour of an
invariable Spanish identity” (“Culture, Identity and Civilisation,” 55).
25
Sánchez-Albornoz, Andalucía islámica, 14. The quote before his text and its translations is (partially) taken from Tolan,
“Using the Middle Ages,” 343.
132 A. GARCÍA-SANJUÁN

In this book he also shows his unconcealed satisfaction with the end of al-Andalus, saying,
in almost providentialist terms, that “it was bad for Spain that the Muslims entered it and
for our good that they were defeated and expelled. We, the Spanish people, we should
thank God for having freed us from Islam.”26
Another historical myth of Spanish nationalism emerged within the political and ideo-
logical context of the Franco regime. Ignacio Olagüe (1903–1974) was an amateur histor-
ian whose ideology had closely aligned with that of mainstream Spanish fascism in the
years prior to the Civil War.27 After a first version in French (Les arabes n’ont jamais
envahi l’Espagne, 1969), Olagüe gave final shape to his unfounded assertions in La revolu-
ción islámica en Occidente (1974), where he challenged the idea that the foundations of
al-Andalus lay in the Islamic conquest of 711. Olagüe instead claimed domestic origins
for al-Andalus: it was, according to him, the result of a religious civil war between two
opposing factions within the Visigothic kingdom (the unitarian Arians and the trinitarian
Catholics). In the words of Eduardo Manzano:28
The defenders of this theory – who have an answer to everything – assure us that the whole
thing was a war between Visigoths, one faction of which was still practicing Arianism: the
heresy that Christ isn’t of the same substance as the Father, which every Catholic proclaims
when he recites the Nicene Creed. The Arians must have won this conflict, with the result
that Hispania broke away from the Catholic orbit, and was progressively arabised and con-
verted to Islam through commercial and cultural contact over the course of the ninth century.

Despite the deeply misleading nature of Olagüe’s work (at best ignores and neglects the
sources, and at worst misleads the reader with a faulty interpretation of the information),29
his ideas about the origins of al-Andalus were adopted by the Spanish Arabist Emilio Gon-
zález Ferrín in his Historia general de Al Andalus (2006), in which he almost completely
disregards the problems surrounding the sources. In my monograph about the Islamic
conquest from 2013, I criticized both Olagüe and González Ferrín, stressing the close
relationship between traditionalist historiography and the use of a very specific historical
vocabulary in which terms like “Islamic invasion” and “Reconquista” play a key role.30 In
his review of my monograph, Kenneth Baxter Wolf nonetheless questioned the style of my
criticism and, without denying the Islamic conquest, pointed out that Ferrín’s adoption of
Olagüe’s ideas might be considered an acceptable way of understanding a supposed fuzzi-
ness of religious identity during the seventh and eighth centuries.31

The exclusionary vision of al-Andalus in present-day conservative Spanish

historical memory
It does not seem hard to admit that, as James L. Boone puts it, “the conservative view of
Spain’s medieval past dominated historiography during the late nineteenth century and
again particularly during the Franco regime up to 1975.”32 This view has indeed outlasted
26
Sánchez-Albornoz, Andalucía islámica, 23: “para mal de España entraron los islamitas en ella y para nuestro bien fueron
vencidos y expulsados. Demos los españoles gracias a Dios por habernos librado del Islam.”
27
Fierro, “Al-Andalus en el pensamiento fascista español,” 325–49.
28
Manzano, “Did the Arabs really.”
29
García-Sanjuán, La conquista islámica de la Península Ibérica.
30
González Ferrín, Historia general de Al Andalus.
31
Wolf, “Negating negationism.” See my response, “La tergiversación del pasado.”
32
Boone, Lost Civilization, 13.
 JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL IBERIAN STUDIES 133

the Transition; although Franco’s death (1975) and the coming of democracy (1978)
caused a temporary retraction of the historiographical discourse associated with the
notion of Reconquista, due to its strong identification with the dictatorship, the twenty-
first century has witnessed an intensification of these outmoded nineteenth-century
ideas. Since September 11 terrorist organizations have insisted on the need to recover
the lost Islamic lands of al-Andalus.33 Spanish conservatives have repeatedly used such
claims, especially since the terrorist attacks of 11 March 2004, to argue that Islam has
posed a continuous threat to Spain throughout history. Commemorations of relevant his-
torical events, such as the expulsion of the moriscos (1609/2009), the Islamic conquest
(711/2011), or the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa (1212/2012), as well as recent develop-
ments like the law granting citizenship to the descendants of Sephardic Jews (2015),
have created an environment within which two opposing understandings of al-Andalus
have come into conflict: a conservative view, dismissive of the historical legacy of al-
Andalus, and a progressive perspective, favouring its integration into national historical
memory. Proponents of these views have clashed publicly, not only in academia but in
the political and journalistic arenas as well.
The terrorist attacks of 2004 placed the relationship of Spain with Islam in the spotlight
once again, revealing the still-problematic role of al-Andalus within Spanish historical
memory. Conservatives seized the opportunity to recover the classic “Reconquista” dis-
course, which had been in academic decline since Franco’s death. One of the foremost pro-
ponents of this view was then President José María Aznar. Three days after the attacks,
general elections resulted in his removal from office. In September, Aznar gave a public
lecture at Georgetown University in which he formulated his peculiar explanation of
what had happened in Madrid. In his view, the attacks had nothing to do with the 2003
invasion of Iraq, in which his Government participated despite overwhelming Spanish
public opinion to the contrary. Rather, the real cause of the terrorist attacks, he said,
lay elsewhere, in the distant past:34
The problem Spain has with Al Qaeda and Islamic terrorism did not begin with the Iraq
Crisis. In fact, it has nothing to do with government decisions. You have to go back no
less than 1,300 years, to the early eighth century, when a Spain recently invaded by the
Moors refused to become just another piece in the Islamic world and began a long battle
to recover its identity. This Reconquista process was very long, lasting some 800 years.
However, it ended successfully.

Aznar’s words, extensively echoed by the mainstream Spanish media,35 are a shining
example of what Giles Tremlett observed some years ago: “Spanish politicians have
proven themselves quite ready to seek ammunition for contemporary debates from real
or imagined versions of the medieval period.”36 This “Aznarian” vision of 711 as a
proto-terrorist act is a contemporary and updated version of one of the key concepts of

33
See Rubio Garrido, “La fascinación,” 231–45.
34
The text of the speech is apparently not available on Aznar’s official website. See http://www.jmaznar.es/es (accessed July
21, 2016). This transcription is taken from http://its4am.blogspot.com.es/2004/10/aznars-address-at-georgetown.html
(accessed August 21, 2016). See also: http://georgetownvoice.com/2004/09/23/aznar-defends-spanish-war-on-terror-
as-new-gu-faculty-member/ (accessed August 21, 2016).
35
Pardo, “Aznar afirma que el problema de España con Al Qaeda empieza en el siglo VIII”, El Mundo, September 22, 2004, 12.
36
Tremlett, “Foreword,” xii.
134 A. GARCÍA-SANJUÁN

the classical paradigm of the Reconquista: the historical illegitimacy of al-Andalus since
the beginning.
In 2006, just two years after his Georgetown lecture, Aznar redisplayed his low estimation
of Spain’s Arab and Islamic past, this time with regard to the Regensburg lecture recently
delivered by Pope Benedict XVI, in which the pontiff had referred to a statement by the four-
teenth-century Byzantine emperor Manuel Palaiologos: “Show me just what Muhammad
brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his
command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”37 These pontifical statements
were understood by many as a derogatory reference to Islam, triggering a strong wave of
protests around the world, particularly in Islamic countries. Responding to the demand
that the Pope apologize, Aznar went to the Pontiff’s defence at the Hudson Institute in
Washington, DC, saying that it was in fact the Muslims who should apologize for having
conquered Spain: “many people in the Islamic world claim that the Pope should apologize,
but I do not hear any Muslims asking me for my forgiveness for having conquered Spain and
stayed there for eight centuries.”38
The logical complement to these disparaging ideas about Iberia’s Arabic and Islamic
past is the celebration of the Reconquista as the historical process of Spanish nation-build-
ing. Unsurprisingly, this too forms part of Aznar’s thinking: “we are a nation made against
Islam.” Not by coincidence, his main historiographical references are Sánchez-Albornoz
and Menéndez Pidal, the two greatest representatives of twentieth-century Spanish
nationalist historiography. In Aznar’s opinion, España, un enigma histórico, perhaps the
definitive academic expression of Spanish essentialism, represents “the best explanation
of our country’s origins.”39 This outmoded and anachronistic vision about the medieval
Iberian past and the origins of the Spanish nation is not unique to Aznar, but rather an
integral part of the ideology of the Partido Popular (PP), the political party he led
between 1990 and 2004. This ideological stance is clear in the political amendment intro-
duced by Aleix Vidal-Quadras40 at the Sixteenth Congress of the PP (June 2008), a text
that includes the classical view of the Reconquista in which the origins of Spain are
linked exclusively to the Christian kingdoms:41
The Spanish Nation, as a historical and cultural reality, has its roots in the medieval Christian
kingdoms, but relies primarily on their common Roman and Visigoth heritage in Hispania,
as well as on the political unity established five hundred years ago with the integration of
these kingdoms under the Spanish Monarchy through the union of the crowns of Castile
and Aragon and the Kingdom of Navarra.

This text clearly reveals the open commitment of PP, Spain’s most important right-wing
political party, to the notion of Reconquista. This reality is a common feature across the

37
See the English translation of Pope’s lecture at: http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/speeches/2006/september/
documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20060912_university-regensburg.html (accessed September 30, 2016).
38
Pardo, “Aznar: no oigo a los musulmanes pedir perdón”, El Mundo, September 23, 2006, 27; Monge, “Aznar pretende que
los musulmanes le pidan perdón por haber conquistado España y ocuparla durante ocho siglos,” El País, September 23,
2006, 22. These words of the former Spanish President were heavily criticized by the Spanish Islamic Council, see El País,
“La Junta Islámica descalifica las palabras de Aznar contra la conquista musulmana,” El País, September 24, 2006, 29
39
Aznar, Cartas, 162 and 199.
40
Former president of the PP in Catalonia and vice-president of the European Parliament between 2004–2014. In 2014 he
left his role in the PP to become involved in a new ring-wing political party, Vox.
41
http://www.partidopopular.us/actividades/16congreso/enmienda_ponencia_politica_1.pdf (accessed November 20,
2016).
 JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL IBERIAN STUDIES 135

conservative ideological spectrum in Spain. For example, a 2010 book by Josep Anglada,
head of the right-wing Platform for Catalonia, includes an explicit defence of the Recon-
quista as a project of national liberation, in his party’s characteristic militant and openly
xenophobic and Islamophobic tone:42
Spain is also, as a nation, the result of this historic and endemic battle for liberation from the
Islamic yoke imposed upon us in the eighth century, taking advantage of the moral weakness
of the Visigoths (…). After the Reconquista, Islam remained a latent threat because the
recovery of Al-Andalus was still vindicated in Muslim ideology. Contrary to what some
might think, Al-Andalus is not simply Andalusia, Murcia, and Badajoz, but all of Spain
and even the South of France.

The exaltation of the Reconquista is not an exclusive feature of right-wing political organ-
izations. As during Franco’s dictatorship, at the beginning of the twenty-first century
National Catholic historical memory in Spain continues to be promoted by prominent
figures within the Church and by Catholic historians, following in the tradition of Fray
Justo Pérez de Urbel (1895–1979).43 The historical work of the priest José Orlandis
(1918–2010) began before 1975, but he continued to publish for thirty-five years after
Franco’s death.44 In one of his last publications, he invoked the authority of Menéndez
Pelayo and his famous National Catholic proclamation, “a mixture of harangue and pro-
phecy but ultimately based on data from historical experience,” adding that his words were
still “remarkably relevant today.”45 Even more recently, in 2014, Santiago Cantera Mon-
tegro, a Benedictine monk from the Valle de los Caídos46 published his Hispania / Spania.
El nacimiento de España, a 563-page book that returns to a core idea of the National
Catholic discourse: that the Visigothic kingdom of Toledo, particularly following King
Reccared’s conversion to Catholicism in 589, had represented the first manifestation of
a politically unified Spanish nation.
A few years earlier, Cardinal Antonio Cañizares, Archbishop of Toledo and primate of
the Catholic Church in Spain, devoted his inaugural address at the Real Academia de la
Historia (Madrid) to this topic, under the title El esplendor visigótico, momento clave en
la edificación de España y para su futuro [The Visigothic splendour, a key moment for
the building of Spain and its future]. In this speech, he argued that “Christianity, the
Catholic faith, whether or not professed by the people, and like it or not, is the soul of
Spain.” Though this kind of statement might not be surprising coming from a high-
level representative of the Catholic Church, it is striking that it was articulated by a

42
Anglada, Sin mordaza, 385. He is likely reacting against proposals to recover Catalonia’s Islamic past; on this topic, see, for
example, Bramón, Moros, Judíos y Cristianos.
43
He was a leading political and academic figure during the Franco dictatorship: first Abbot of the Monastery of the Holy
Cross of the Valle de los Caídos, Member of the High Council of the National Fascist Party [Consejero Nacional del Movi-
miento], and member of the Francoist Parliament [Procurador en Cortes]. See Pasamar and Peiró, Diccionario, 485–86.
44
Upon his death, Orlandis was the oldest Prelature of Opus Dei priest in the world, with 70 years of militancy. See his
obituary in Bedoya, “José Orlandis, el miembro más antiguo del Opus Dei,” El País, December 29, 2010. http://elpais.
com/diario/2010/12/29/necrologicas/1293577202_850215.html (accessed November 20, 2016). On this author, see
also Pasamar and Peiró Diccionario, 451–52.
45
Orlandis, “Sobre los orígenes,” 12.
46
Located in the town of San Lorenzo de El Escorial (Madrid), the Valley of the Fallen (the Benedictine Abbey of the Holy
Cross of the Valley of the Fallen) is the main Francoist memorial in Spain; it was built between 1940 and 1958 to “perpe-
tuate the memory of the fallen in our glorious Crusade” and is the current burial place of Franco and José-Antonio Primo
de Rivera (founder of Falange Española, the main Spanish Fascist party). Santiago Cantera is currently prior-manager
[prior administrador] of the Abbey, which means that he acts as Abbot.
136 A. GARCÍA-SANJUÁN

member of the Real Academia de la Historia.47 Cañizares is not, however, an isolated case:
some of the most important recent affirmations of exclusionary historical memory regard-
ing al-Andalus have been made by members of that institution. This includes scholar Luis
Suárez Fernández,48 who, in his historical reflections, invokes the tradition of the ultra-
Catholic priest and philosopher Jaime Balmes (1810–1848) and reduces the eight centuries
of al-Andalus to the status of a mere “hiatus in the life of the Spanish nation.”49
A similar approach is adopted by Serafín Fanjul, a member of the Real Academia since
2012 and a frequent contributor to Spain’s most conservative newspapers (ABC and La
Razón). In 2000 he authored Al-Andalus contra España, a text in which he embraces
the idea of a radical opposition between Spain and al-Andalus, focusing on the demolition
of the so-called “myth of al-Andalus” – that is, the notion that Muslim-ruled Spain had
been a place of religious tolerance.
Fanjul shares this approach with the publicists and propagandists of conservative
Spanish nationalism. One of the chief representatives of this group is César Vidal, a
popular journalist who in his España frente al Islam, published the same year as the
Madrid bombing attacks, described the Islamic prophet Muhammad as a terrorist.50
That publication has been accurately called a “compendium of clichés and stereotypes
expertly wielded to present Islam as an enemy, in the past, present, and future.”51 The aca-
demic Antonio Elorza expressed similar ideas in a newspaper article (published a few days
after those tragic events) in which he charged the Prophet with the anachronistic offense of
“crimes against humanity.”52 While César Vidal denigrates Islam in order to exclude al-
Andalus from Spanish collective historical memory, José-Javier Esparza, a regular contri-
butor to conservative media outlets, focuses on the musty, old-fashioned, glorification of
the Reconquista as a war of national liberation. This is the central thrust of Santiago y
cierra, España. El nacimiento de una nación (2013), whose title invokes the rallying cry
associated with the figure of Santiago “Matamoros,” the most important patron saint of
the Reconquista.
Excluding al-Andalus from Spanish national identity, and therefore from Spanish
national history, is not unique to ultraconservatives. There are, in fact, a number of
recent examples of this discourse among mainstream academic circles. For example, in
2013 a group of historians under the direction of A. Morales Moya, J.P. Fusi, and A. de
Blas published Historia de la nación y del nacionalismo español, a 1518-page book in
which eight centuries of Andalusi history are reduced to a single page.53 Texts that

47
Cañizares Llovera, El esplendor visigótico, 44.
48
Suárez Fernández is openly committed to Francoism. Thanks to his position as Rector of the University of Valladolid he
was elected member of the Francoist Parliament [Procurador en Cortes]. He is currently President of the Brotherhood of
the Valley of the Fallen, one of the institutions involved in perpetuating the memory of the dictator. Suárez is also the
author of the entry on Franco in the Spanish Biographical Dictionary published by the Real Academia de la Historia, a text
which generated a strong academic and political debate in Spain due to the author’s refusal to describe Franco as a “dic-
tator.” Badcock, “General Franco to be officially defined by Spain as a dictator”, The Telegraph, April 8, 2015. http://www.
telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/spain/11519691/General-Franco-to-be-officially-defined-by-Spain-as-a-
dictator.html (accessed August 21, 2016).
49
Suárez Fernández, “Los fundamentos,” 125.
50
Vidal, España frente al Islam, 59–60. On the Islamophobic dimensions of Vidal’s book, see Bravo López, “Islamofobia y
antimusulmanismo,” 47–71.
51
Alvarez-Ossorio, “El Islam y la identidad española,” 276.
52
Elorza, “Yihad en Madrid,”, El País, March 18, 2004. Elorza is currently Professor of Political Sciences at the Complutense
University of Madrid.
53
García-Sanjuán, “Review.”
 JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL IBERIAN STUDIES 137

explicitly challenge the traditional paradigm of Spanish nationalism about the Middle
Ages are therefore worthy of particular mention: among these, the contributions of
Eduardo Manzano and Antoni Furió deserve special attention, not only for their global
reading of the medieval Iberian past, but also for their healthy critical point of view.54
In pursuit of a progressive agenda, there have also been several recent social and pol-
itical initiatives designed to integrate al-Andalus into Spanish historical memory. The
model for these initiatives has been the very favourable treatment given to the descendants
of Sephardic Jews during the last decades, for instance through the Príncipe de Asturias
‘Concord’ award granted to the Sephardic community in 1990, and through the expansion
of the right of Sephardic Jews to Spanish nationality, established in the Civil Code. This
right was facilitated in a 2015 parliamentary act that simplifies the legal requirements
for applicants.55 The passage of this law was celebrated at the highest institutional level.
In a special ceremony held at the royal palace in Madrid, King Felipe VI announced
that it was a privilege to be able to write “a new page in history.” He also thanked the repre-
sentatives of the Sephardic communities for having preserved the Ladino language and for
having taught their children “to love their Spanish homeland.” He expressed the collective
feeling of joy among the Spanish people for this reunification: “How we missed you!”56
These initiatives, aimed at recognizing the historical memory of the Sephardic Jews,
were unanimously supported both by the main political parties and by the most important
national mass media. However, this sharply contrasts with the case of the descendants of
the moriscos. The most immediate attempt to establish legal recognition for historical
memory of the moriscos occurred in February 2002, exactly five hundred years after a
decree issued by the Catholic Monarchs that forced the last Andalusi Muslims to
choose between conversion or exile (1502). Participants in the First World Andalusi Con-
gress, held in Chefchaouen (Morocco), sent a letter to King Juan Carlos I (r. 1975–2014),
drafted by Mohammed Hakim Ben Azzuz, the leading Moroccan Hispanist (d. 2014).
They requested the revocation of the expulsion order and the implementation of some
kind of relief action similar to that which had been taken with regard to the descendants
of the Sephardic Jews.57
This initiative, which fell upon deaf ears, was followed several years later by a second,
aimed at securing the moriscos’ descendants the right to Spanish citizenship. In September
2006, a bill was presented in the Andalusian Parliament by the leftist group Izquierda
Unida-Los Verdes. Convocatoria por Andalucía. Antonio-Manuel Rodríguez Ramos, a
professor of Civil Law at the University of Córdoba, unsuccessfully proposed a reform

54
Manzano Moreno, Épocas medievales; Furió, “Las Españas medievales.”
55
This issue has been widely reported in international media. See, for example, BBC, “Spain passes citizenship plan for des-
cendants of Jews exiled centuries ago,” BBC News, June 11, 2015. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-33102891
(accessed August 21, 2016). The same decision was made by Portuguese authorities the same year: BBC, “Portugal to
naturalise descendants of Jews expelled centuries ago,” BBC News, January 29, 2015. http://www.bbc.com/news/
world-europe-31051223 (Accessed August 21, 2016).
56
Alberola, “Spanish King to Sephardic Jews: How We Missed You”, El País (English edition), December 2, 2015. http://elpais.
com/elpais/2015/12/01/inenglish/1448979993_879941.html (accessed November 20, 2016).
57
Arias, “Los descendientes de andalusíes dicen que la Ley de extranjería los margina,” El País, December 21, 2002. http://
elpais.com/diario/2002/12/21/andalucia/1040426557_850215.html (accessed November 21, 2016). See the text of the
letter on: Flores, “Primera Carta del líder andalusí Mohammad Ben Azzuz Hakim a S. M. el Rey Juan Carlos I de
España”, Webislam, December 27, 2005. http://www.webislam.com/articulos/28120-primera_carta_del_lider_andalusi_
mohammad_ben_azzuz_hakim_a_s_m_el_rey_juan_carl.html (accessed August 18, 2016). See in this regard the
opinion of Gibson “Desagravio pendiente,” El País, December 17, 2002. http://elpais.com/diario/2002/12/17/andalucia/
1040080931_850215.html (accessed November 21, 2016).
138 A. GARCÍA-SANJUÁN

of Article 22.1 of the Civil Code – which grants Spanish citizenship by right of residence –
whereby the terms “Morisco” or “Andalusi” would have been introduced.58 The bill was
defeated; organizations representing the moriscos lamented the radically different treat-
ment of the descendants of the morisco and Sephardic communities. The Association of
Andalusi Memory complained that it was, in fact, a “racist act which emanates from seg-
regationist politics.”59
Conservatives greeted this failure to grant Spanish nationality to the descendants of the
moriscos as a logical decision. Writing in ABC, Serafín Fanjul articulated this perspective:60
The argument of the initiative’s proponents, lachrymose and opportunistic, is for a moral res-
titution to the Moors expelled between 1609 and 1614. But in fact they do not ask for moral
compensation, as would be logical, assuming that we – the Spaniards of 2007 – are respon-
sible for the good or bad actions committed by the moriscos and Spaniards of the seventeenth
century. Instead, what they request is a material gift, a Spanish passport (when the entry of
Latin Americans into the country is restricted): a passport of a nation which their forefathers
hated with a vengeance, both before and after their exile.

The year 2009 marked the fourth anniversary of the expulsion of the moriscos from Spain:
an expulsion, ordered by King Philip III in 1609, which had aimed to end the Muslim pres-
ence in Iberia (despite the fact that the expelled moriscos were officially Catholic). On this
anniversary a Socialist member of the Spanish parliament, José-Antonio Pérez Tapias,
introduced a motion urging the government to take action to “reinforce economic,
social and cultural ties” with the nations in the Maghreb and sub-Saharan Africa that
were home to the moriscos’ descendants. The initiative was approved despite opposition
from conservative parties such as the Partido Popular (PP) and Convergencia i Unió
(CiU).61 Spanish conservative media coverage of this initiative, however, eloquently
reveals the continuity of an exclusionary historical memory about al-Andalus. Reactions
ranged from virulent rejection to undisguised jeering. ABC, the same newspaper that in
1990 had spoken of the need for “reconciliation” with the descendants of Sephardic
Jews, decried the initiative as being “ridiculous” and “absurd,” and called for experts to
approach the issue “with the criteria of prudence and objectivity.”62 One of the most
common arguments was to criminalize the moriscos, for instance by describing the War
of the Alpujarras as the bloodiest conflict in the Iberian Peninsula prior to the Civil
War.63 Others accused the president (José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero) of trying to mask
the economic crisis by using the moriscos as a smokescreen, “a sandstorm to hide
reality.”64
Conservatives also refused to consider any kind of compensation, even of a purely
moral or honorific nature. In 2010, progressive and leftist sectors proposed awarding
the Príncipe de Asturias “Concord” award to the moriscos. The nomination was supported
by renowned international intellectuals, including José Saramago (winner of the 1998
Nobel Prize for Literature) and the French-Lebanese writer Amin Maalouf (winner of

58
Boletín Oficial del Parlamento Andaluz (BOPA) 519 (2 October 2006): 28735.
59
EFE, “Los moriscos condenan por racista su exclusión de la nacionalidad española,” El Mundo, June 15, 2015.
60
Fanjul, “Inmigrantes y moriscos,” ABC, January 4, 2007, 3.
61
Boletín Oficial del Congreso (BOCG). Congreso de los Diputados Núm. D-308 de 11/12/2009.
62
Editorial, “Ahora, los Moriscos,” ABC, November 25, 2009, 4.
63
Martín Ferrand, “¡Que vienen los turcos!” ABC, November 26, 2009.
64
Machuca, “Morisquetas moriscas,” ABC, November 26, 2009.
 JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL IBERIAN STUDIES 139

the 2010 Príncipe de Asturias Prize for Literature), notable Spanish cultural figures such as
the novelist Juan Goytisolo, and leading institutions including the Blas Infante Foun-
dation65 and the Casa de Sefarad (Córdoba). The three main political parties in the Anda-
lusian Parliament (PSOE, PP, and IU) made an official statement in support of the
moriscos’ candidacy: one of the few examples of unanimity among political parties from
both the right and the left with regard to the historical memory of al-Andalus.66
However, as with the previous two attempts to provide institutional recognition to the
expulsion of the moriscos, this initiative was rejected and the prize was finally awarded
in 2011 to the Heroes of Fukushima.
The widespread failure of conservative Spanish politicians and media outlets to recog-
nize the historical memory of the moriscos sharply contrasts with the situation in Morocco,
where the new Constitution (2011) explicitly identifies the Andalusi legacy as one of the
elements that have enriched its unity.67 It has been accompanied by the exaltation and
glorification of the Reconquista. On the eighth centenary of the Battle of Las Navas de
Tolosa (2012), Jaime Ignacio del Burgo, a PP member of the Spanish congress, wrote
that “in Las Navas de Tolosa Spain’s destiny played out. It was a great feat of Hispanic
unity, in which the peninsular Christian kingdoms showed up to face the Muslim
danger that threatened to take back Al Andalus.”68 Similarly, Esteban González Pons,
then General Vice Secretary of the PP, proclaimed the continuity between present-day
Spaniards and the medieval Christian rulers (“our kings”). He went on to adopt a crude
Manichaeism: the “fanaticism” of the Almohads (“120,000 men inflamed by holy war
against the infidel”), was contrasted with the bravery of the Christians fighting for national
unity (“70,000 soldiers representing … a united Spain against a common danger”). He
referred to the Almohad caliph as “a radical who had sworn to wet the hooves of his
horse in the Tiber, not stopping until he reached Rome.” (Would King Alfonso X, one
wonders, be called a “radical” for trying to wage a crusade in North Africa – the fecho
de allende, as it was called?).
The speech provided a vivid illustration of how historiographical discourse, with its
heavy burden of prejudices, can feed ideologies.69 The significance of the victory at Las
Navas was described in similar terms by a scholarly specialist, Rafael Sánchez Saus, who
lamented how little attention had been given to the commemoration : a reflection, he
argued, of what he describes as “the undeniable desire to erase the awareness of what
we are.” Like Sánchez-Albornoz, he overtly expresses his satisfaction about the victory
over the Muslims, which “made the Castilian conquest of Andalusia possible” and
“allowed the full geographic and historical integration of the Iberian Peninsula into
Western civilization.”70 Sánchez’s monograph Al-Andalus y la cruz (2016) draws upon
outmoded National Catholic views of al-Andalus, riddled with historical inaccuracies.71

65
Blas Infante, killed by Francoist forces in August 1936, was the founder of Andalusian nationalism, the only nationalist
ideology in Spain to claim al-Andalus as an essential part of its national identity.
66
BOPA 404, July 7, 2010.
67
Royaume du Maroc. Bulletin Officiel, n° 5952 bis, 14 rejeb 1432 (17 juin 2011). http://www.amb-maroc.fr/constitution/
TEXTE.PROJET.CONST.pdf (accessed 29, August 2016).
68
Del Burgo, “Cuando los vascos,” 131–32.
69
González Pons, “1212+1812+1912 = 2012,” ABC, July 17, 2012, 3.
70
Sánchez Saus, “Recordemos las Navas,” Diario de Sevilla, July 19, 2012. http://www.diariodesevilla.es/opinion/articulos/
Recordemos-Navas_0_607739365.html (accessed November 21, 2016).
71
On this book, see García-Sanjuán, “La persistencia del discurso nacionalcatólico.”
140 A. GARCÍA-SANJUÁN

The debate around the official commemoration of the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa
reveals the political implications of divergent historical memories about the Middle
Ages in Spain. A heated controversy about the commemoration arose between the Provin-
cial Council of Jaén, governed by the PSOE, and the mayors of the three main towns near
the location of the battle (La Carolina, Santa Helena, and Vílches), all governed by the PP.
Francisco Gallarín, the mayor of La Carolina (described in a national newspaper as a kind
of “Pelagius of the twenty-first century”),72 advocated patriotic and religious ceremonies –
specifically, a tribute to the Army and the celebration of mass on the battlefield. His frus-
tration was the focus of an article by Hermann Tertsch, bemoaning the difference with the
lavish celebrations he had witnessed in Vienna in 1983 on the tercentenary of the failed
Ottoman siege of the city.73 In the same newspaper, José-Manuel de Prada revealed a
thinly veiled anti-Islamism (“the blood shed from Christian veins rid us of a shameful
slavery”).74
The clearest indication of the controversies surrounding Spanish historical memory of
the Middle Ages, however, continues to be the commemoration of the surrender of
Granada (1492). Every 2 January, representatives from City Hall, the Army, and the
Catholic Church participate in a public and official commemoration of La Toma, the con-
quest of the city. This occasion has continually been marked by strong dissent between
progressives, who argue that the commemoration glorifies an act of conquest and violence,
and more conservative groups. In recent years, there have been gatherings of people in
Plaza del Carmen (the location of City Hall, where the celebration starts) carrying Fran-
coist Spanish flags and symbols of the Falange and other far-right organizations.75 In 2013,
the leftist parties (PSOE and IU) chose not to participate, and the official delegation con-
sisted only of members of the PP government and a councilman from the moderate con-
servative party Unión Progreso y Democracia (UPyD). The General Director of Historical
Memory of the Andalusian government, Luis Naranjo (a member of the Izquierda Unida
[IU] party), instead supported a commemoration of the execution of the nineteenth-
century liberal Mariana Pineda, on 26 May.76 This proposal generated negative reactions
in the conservative press, which decried the “buffoonery” and “ridiculous legends” of the
Andalusian left77 For its part, the PP-led city government of Granada claimed that La

72
Donaire, “Un Don Pelayo del siglo XXI,” El País (Andalucía edition), November 5, 2011. http://elpais.com/diario/2011/10/
05/andalucia/1317766934_850215.html (accessed November 20, 2016).
73
Tertsch, “De Viena a Despeñaperros,” ABC, July 17, 2012, 13.
74
De Prada, “Dos conmemoraciones,” ABC, July 16, 2012.
75
One of them is Democracia Nacional, which, on the occasion of the 2016 celebration, published a “Manifesto for 2
January” on its website. It is worth quoting this text, which shows, among other things, that this organization’s vision
of the past coincides with the conservative approach to medieval Iberian history: “The Taking of Granada is undoubtedly
one of our founding milestones, since it meant the end of the cruel occupation to which our country was subjected for
centuries, consolidating and unifying the territories that would give birth to the oldest nation-state in Europe: Spain.” See
“Manifiesto del 2 de Enero,” http://democracianacional.org/dn/toma-de-granada-2016/ (accessed August 28, 2016). The
idea that Spain is the oldest European nation-state is part of the official doctrine of the PP, as it was established on its
16th Congress (Valencia, 20–22 June, 2008), see “Ponencia Política,” art. 52. It has been also repeatedly affirmed by the
current Spanish President, Mariano Rajoy. See, for example, VERNE, “Rajoy sigue diciendo,” El País, June 23, 2016. http://
verne.elpais.com/verne/2016/06/22/articulo/1466609191_241459.html (accessed 4, September 2016).
76
El País, “La Junta y la Diputación de Granada se enfrentan por La Toma”, El País, January 1, 2013. http://ccaa.elpais.com/
ccaa/2013/01/01/andalucia/1357067066_302415.html (accessed November 20, 2016). Mariana Pineda was a Spanish
liberal activist executed in 1831 by order of Fernando VII, the last Spanish absolutist king, becoming a symbol of the
fight for liberty and civil rights.
77
Tertsch, “Boabdil y el maquis,” ABC, January 4, 2013.
 JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL IBERIAN STUDIES 141

Toma should be declared a Heritage of Cultural Interest78 by the Andalusian government,

a proposal which drew criticism in the national press.79 The proposal was eventually
rejected by the Andalusian Parliament, as a result of the opposition from PSOE and IU.80
The city of Badajoz presents us with a diametrically opposite commemoration: that of
the founding of the city by the Muslim leader Ibn Marwân al-Yillîqî in 875. This celebra-
tion was first established as a private initiative, becoming public after municipal auth-
orities took charge of it in 2007. Unlike the commemorative events in Granada, this
celebration, Almossasa Batalyos,81 has a ludic and secular character. This example
shows the integration of the memory of al-Andalus into the city’s present, free of contro-
versy; this fact is striking since the city has been governed by the PP since 1995.82
Conservative configurations of historical memory problematically reject the Andalusi
past, which stretches over more than eight centuries of peninsular history and encom-
passes some of Spain’s most important historical landmarks, particularly the Alhambra
in Granada and the mosque of Córdoba, UNESCO cultural heritage sites. Beside their his-
torical and aesthetic value, these monuments are an important source of income for the
local economy83 as well as internationally recognized icons of Spanish culture. It seems
reasonable to call for the greater involvement of scholarly specialists in rebutting the
myths, prejudices, and distortions associated with the notion of Reconquista, in order
to promote a more balanced reading of the medieval Iberian past.

Notes on contributor
Alejandro García-Sanjuán, Senior Lecturer, Medieval History, Huelva University (Spain), 959 21
91 51, Avda. Tres de Marzo s/n, Huelva, Spain. Email: sanjuan@uhu.es.

Works cited
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December 2, 2015. http://elpais.com/elpais/2015/12/01/inenglish/1448979993_879941.html
(accesed August 2, 2016).
Álvarez Junco, J. Spanish Identity in the Age of Nations. Manchester, UK: Manchester University
Press, 2011.
Álvarez-Ossorio, I. “El Islam y la identidad española: de al-Andalus al 11-M.” In Nacionalismo
español: esencias, memoria e instituciones, directed by. C. Taibo, 267–90. Madrid: Catarata, 2007.
Anglada, J. Sin mordaza y sin velos. Barcelona: Rambla, 2010.

78
Bien de Interés Cultural (BIC) is a Spanish legal concept by which a competent authority (local or national) gives special
protection to material goods or immaterial heritage with high value for the collective identity of a population or
community.
79
Cortés, “La Junta se opone a festejar la Toma de Granada y declararla Bien de Interés Cultural,” El País, January 2, 2013:
http://ccaa.elpais.com/ccaa/2013/01/02/andalucia/1357153468_319414.html (accessed November 21, 2016).
80
Jerónimo, “El PSOE tumba la iniciativa de declarar BIC la Toma de Granada,” ABC, April 11, 2013. http://sevilla.abc.es/
andalucia/granada/20130411/sevi-psoe-tumba-iniciativa-declarar-201304101922.html (accessed November 21, 2016).
81
Presumably the name comes from the Arabic Mu’assasat Batalyaws, or “foundation of Badajoz,” although the correct way
to say this would actually be ta’sîs Batalyaws.
82
See the information on the Badajoz City Hall Website: Ayuntamiento de Badajoz, “Almossassa 2016”, http://www.
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83
In recent years, the Alhambra has been one of the most visited historical monuments in Spain. According to its Website,
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