The Return of the Moor: Spanish Responses to Contemporary Moroccan Immigration

Chapter Three: Playing Guest and Host

97 Chapter Three Playing Guest and Host Moors and Christians, Moroccans and Spaniards in Historical Novels and Festive Reenactments Era un verdadero moro, esto es, un moro de novela. [He was a real Moor, that is, a literary Moor.] Pedro Antonio de Alarcón Diario de un testigo de la Guerra de África This chapter examines the relationship between Moroccan immigration and the current popularity of the figure of the medieval Moor in the culture and tourist industry, focusing on the “boom” of historical novels and the multitudinous festivals of Moors and Christians. In both of these cases, the preoccupation with current changes in the racial and ethnic composition of Spanish society is displaced into a distant and safer past, the imaginary and idealized space of medieval Spain’s “multiculturalism avant la lettre.” Both the novels and the festivals are plagued by the anxiety of delimiting, in that past, the concrete space occupied by each group, to ensure that the limits appear well-established. The novels Moras y cristianas by Ángeles de Irisarri and Magdalena Lasala (1998) and El viaje de la reina by Ángeles de Irisarri (1991) attempt to reconstruct a past in which the domains of thought, activity, and residence of Moorish and Christian women can be clearly delineated. In the same way, the Fiestas de moros y cristianos, in which Spaniards reenact Christian triumphs over Muslims in medieval wars and sea attacks , constitute an example of the effort at performatively constructing a clear boundary between the two groups. In both of these cases, the efforts to delimit two clear spaces of separation fail. Moors and Christians become simultaneously guests and hosts in what Homi Bhabha calls a “third space” that is neither one of complete separation nor one of homogenization. These 98 Chapter Three attempts to fix a Moorish other reveal the essential ambivalence of the stereotype in a relationship where the boundaries of belonging are never definitely traced. Encounters, as Sarah Ahmed reminds us, “involve both fixation, and the impossibility of fixation” (8). In the texts analyzed in the previous chapter, the Moor was distanced through its transformation into a threatening, invading ghost that constantly returns to haunt the Spanish imaginary. The texts analyzed in this chapter perform a complementary distancing by trying to assure that the Moor stays in the safe space of (an imaginary) medieval Spain. At the same time, as is to be expected, these imaginary Moors cannot stay there, and they were never actually in medieval Spain to begin with. These historical novels and festivals acquire their current popularity and circulation because, precisely, the “Moors” have a physical presence in contemporary Spain. The current material presence of Moroccan immigrants inevitably changes the structure of reception for both novels and festivals and produces new meanings for these cultural and social productions. The Festivals of Moors and Christians Since the 1960s the traditional festivals of Moors and Christians of the Spanish Levant have experienced continuous growth in their size, showiness, and popularity, together with a gradual increase in the number of towns celebrating them. This double expansion is directly related to the continuous development of the tourism industry in Spain throughout the last forty years.1 Each year in dozens of villages in Valencia, Andalusia, and Castile-La Mancha, the extreme fantasy of the festive parades of Moors and Christians reifies the fascination for the exotic Moor and for Spain’s Arab past. This analysis concentrates on examples drawn from ethnographic research carried out on the Alicante festivals, mostly from Alcoy and Villajoyosa, during the year 2002, as well as from official publications of the organizers and publicity brochures.2 In spite of local variations, these celebrations basically consist of a symbolic battle for the local territory that results systematically in victory for the Christian side.3 Like all popular festivals, those of Moors and Christians become a “semiotic battlefield” (Guss 10), where conflictive 99 Playing Guest and Host interests and meanings confront each other. As David M. Guss mentions, “[t]he expanded audiences created by such forces as urbanization, tourism, and new technology . . . may multiply . . . the range of meanings suggested by these events” (4). The imaginary Moors of the festivals, like those of the novels , contain the two aspects of a typical orientalist portrayal: they are treacherous and violent, as were the imaginary Moors analyzed in the previous chapter, but also sensual and creative. The symbols connoting their violence and cruelty...