Decapitation of Christians and Muslims in the Medieval Iberian Peninsula: Narratives, Images, Contemporary Perceptions

[Erratum]

Moors' Heads on Iberian Shields and in Contemporary Politics

In the year 2004, the newspapers of Aragón—a Spanish Autonomous Community (Comunidad Autónoma) located south of the Pyrenees and west of Catalonia—as well as some Spanish national media, mentioned the debate then taking place regarding a specific feature of the Aragonese shield, on which the heads of four Moors appear.¹ (figure 1) Some citizens had asked that these heads be removed from the shield, arguing that they represented the heads of Muslims decapitated during the battle of Alcoraz, when the town of Huesca was conquered by the Christians. The heads thus would evoke the violence against Muslims in Aragón's past, violence deemed to be incompatible with the present day hospitality of a Comunidad that, like the rest of Spain, receives immigrants from many different countries, including Islamic ones. On the other hand, those who argued against changing the traditional shield pointed out that it had been created at the end of the thirteenth century by Pedro III de Aragón, and that the attribution of the shield to Pedro I after the battle of Alcoraz did not appear until the fifteenth century.

Alberto Montaner Frutos, a professor at the University of Saragossa from whose article "Cabezas recortadas o el escudo de Aragón mal entendido" [Severed heads, or the Aragonese shield misunderstood] the aforementioned information is taken, reminded his readers that a head, without a body, also appears in the shields of other Spanish towns such as Barbastro, Cariñena,

Figure 1.

Shield of Aragón

Segovia, and Soria (other names could be added to this list).² In the same way, the essential purpose of both the Moors' heads and the cross of Saint George in the Aragonese shield was—and still is—to identify Aragón. It is also legitimate to interpret this meaning in accordance with present-day realities, without diminishing its validity: the cross would then symbolize the indigenous population (Christian) and the Moors' heads those who have immigrated. This new interpretation would thus indicate "convivencia" (living together) and not confrontation.

To represent the whole by one of its parts is a common artistic practice: to say the opposite would be the same as arguing that the bust of the important local Aragonese figure Mariano de Cavia, located in the Plaza de Aragón of Saragossa, in fact represents his severed head. Montaner Frutos pushed his argument still further in favor of maintaining the shield as it is. Originally, he conceded, the heads on the shield of Aragón expressed the confrontation between Muslims and Christians, but this meaning is incidental: the purpose of an emblem, like that of a family name, is to identify a person, with other possible meanings being secondary. For example, nobody nowadays would believe that someone called Moliner is a "molinero," that is, a person in charge of a mill [molino].

From this perspective, there is no reason to remove the Moors' heads from the Aragonese shield, or to revise the history and tradition associated with them. The Moors' heads have been included in the Aragonese shield since 1281 CE, and have maintained their present form since 1499, and thus are an integral part of the culture and identity of the Aragonese people. Spanish legislation protects the preservation of its historical heritage, and within this context the positive meaning of the Aragonese shield as a symbol of harmony, not of violence, should be stressed and acknowledged, even if the legend of Alcoraz were true, although, Montaner stresses, the Moors' heads never in fact represented the bloody result of any battle.

Finally, in his article Montaner Frutos also criticized the trend towards "political correctness" exhibited by those in favor of eliminating the heads, who appeared to believe that their attempt to "sanitize" this ostensibly problematic symbol amounted to a meaningful solution for the practical issues faced by immigrants in Aragón. These immigrants required political measures to facilitate their legal and social integration, not a...