FRIGILIANA AND THE THREE CULTURES

FRIGILIANA AND THE “ THREE CULTURES”

Below the bus stand in Frigiliana, in the road beside the very convenient public conveniences, is a mini roundabout consisting of a small decorated edifice. The decorations are reliefs of the Cross, Crescent and Star of the three Abrahamic religions. The motifs are a symbol of Frigiliana’s claim to celebrate the “Three Cultlures” of Islam, Judaism and Christianity. The village’s main festival in high summer is called the Festival of Three Cultures. It was instituted in the remote past (2006) and appears to consist of a three day-and-night long street party, with lots of “3C” food and drink and lots of entertainers dressing up in 3C costumes.

One may well be puzzled by this imagery. What has Frigiliana got to do with Islam, Judaism and Christianity, all in tandem? The answer, I think, is “very little”, although the village is indeed the site of one of the battles between Islamic and Christian foes, of which more below.

The “Three Cultures” badge, worn with greater or lesser plausibility by many towns in Spain, refers to the complex societies of Spain in the Middle Ages, between the 700s and c1500.  In a very high bird’s eye view, the period starts with the Islamic conquest of nearly all Spain and a lengthy period of Islamic rule. Then there is the gradual establishment and expansion of Christian kingdoms in the north and west; then the fragmentation of Islamic Spain and the accelerating push southwards of the Christian powers; finally there are about two and a half centuries when Granada is the sole remaining Islamic kingdom (although encompassing a great deal of the southern coastal are, to Malaga and beyond). In 1492 Granada falls and the “Reconquest” is complete.

Some (but not all) of this period has been hailed as exemplifying a model of religious tolerance and co-existence (“La convivencia”). I am not equipped to join the historical-cultural debate. However, I cautiously suggest that, if there were any sort of “Golden Age” of toleration and co-existence, then there are two candidates for presiding over such – the Cordoban Caliphate, which came to grief at the hands of more fundamentalist Muslims in the early C11; and Christian Kingdom of Toledo at the end of the C11. In both places scholarship and architecture were encouraged in a manner which rose above sectarian divides. But….in Cordoba, Christians and Jews were firmly people of second class status, even if their communities were tolerated and brilliant individuals could rise to important positions. (It has been pointed out that, for Jews, this status was a promotion from that endured under previous Christian regimes.) In Toledo, there were not many Muslims, but Jews did thrive for a time.

However, at other times (the majority) and in other cities religious intolerance made its usual appearance (including pogroms against Jews in Muslim Granada and Christian Toledo), culminating in the dark and strident era of the Crusades.

The final Muslim kingdom of Granada had virtually no minorities.

Which brings us back to Frigiliana. So far as I know, it was a Moorish (Islamic) village; certainly before and then under the Kingdom of Granada and, after 1492, under the new Spanish kingdom.

Shortly after 1492 the Moors who wanted to stay in Spain were forced to convert to Christianity and became known as “Moriscos”. This would have happened in Frigiliana. By the end of C16 the Moriscos were all expelled following a failed rebellion against increasing persecution and the village was repopulated by Christians.

Indeed, rather than Frigiliana claiming a history of “Three Cultures” it is noted pre-eminently for that bloody clash of cultures in the late C16, when one of the last stands of the Morisco uprising was destroyed in the Battle of Frigiliana.

That there was a mosque in Frigiliana is certain. As its Information Board proclaims, the village’s C17 church is built on the former’s site.

The “Three Cultures” festival in Frigiliana has little to do with local history and much to do with a free-floating Andalucian part-myth, which is gratefully appropriated for the marketing of the region.

April 2015