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| Vejer de la Frontera |
What do Jérez, Arcos, Morón, Vejer, Chiclana and a number of other
Andalusian towns have in common? Their full and proper names are ‘...de la frontera’.
They are all ‘on the frontier’, and yet, since nothing is simple in
Spain, they aren’t. The Cádiz city of Jerez de la Frontera, for example,
is 242 kilometres away from the nearest frontier – that’s to say,
Portugal.
One could argue that early Spanish cartographers were not very good
at their jobs, or that the Royals were never wrong, but the fact is,
the place names make perfect sense when you roll back a few centuries to
the time of the Moors and the Kingdom of Granada.
The Christian forces of Aragon and Castile were slowly (oh, so
slowly) taking the country back from the Moors. These North African
colonists had been in control of almost all of Spain for anything up to
seven hundred and fifty years (depending on which bit we happen to be
talking about) although, by the beginning of the fifteenth century, the
writing, whether in Arabic or in Latin, was definitely on the wall.
Granada, as we know, capital of the ‘Nazarí Kingdom’, fell in 1492, the
same year as Spain discovered the Americas.
This would be known as Spain’s greatest time.
Stood between the Christian and Moorish territories while leading
up to the final push in the later XV Century were a number of frontier
towns which watched uneasily over a no-man’s-land (or ‘Terra Nullius’
as it was officially known – an unclaimed space between the two
forces). During its existence, this border strip had great military,
political, economic, religious and cultural importance. Beyond being a
border like many others, it was for more than two centuries the European
border between Christianity and Islam. It was, therefore, a place of
exchange and barter, which kept alive in both territories the spirit of
the Christian crusade and the Islamic jihad together with the chivalric
ideal, already anachronistic in other European territories.
It also made possible illicit economic activities, such as trade in
oriental products, as well as regular military incursions, aimed at
taking booty, as well as the captivity of hostages with whom to maintain
the slave business, or simply to negotiate the redemption of captives.
Religious orders took sides in this regard. The border was a key element
in the formation of the identity of Andalucía and in the formation of
the vision of Islam throughout Spain.
While another culture might have dropped the Arab names once
conquered, the Spanish have appeared gracious enough to keep them. Such
towns as Vélez-this and Alhama-that are quite common (the first comes
from the Arab word for ‘land’, the second for ‘baths’). Indeed, anything
beginning in Al – comes from the Arab prefix ‘the’: Alhambra, Almería,
Alpujarra...
Al-Ándalus, as far as the Moors were concerned, means and meant
anything which was under Moorish control in the Peninsular – at some
point, almost as far north as Pamplona.
Of all of the ‘frontera’ towns, mostly located in Cádiz, the largest in Jerez de la Frontera,
with its magnificent Alcazar, an XI Century Moorish fortress. The Moors
called the city ‘Sherish’ and held it until 1264, although the
Christian forces controlled the surrounding lands from 1248. The town
would become a ‘frontier’ with the Granada kingdom.
Jerez is the largest non-capital city in all of Andalucía, with a
population of around 210,000 souls (larger than Cadiz – its provincial
capital – as well as Almería, Jaén and Huelva). It is known for wine,
horses, flamenco and motorcycles.
Morón de la Frontera, in the province of Seville,
owes its appellative to having a major garrison, once it had been
conquered in 1240 by Fernando III, from which the Christian forces could
harass the Moors.
Morón de la Frontera may not have a frontier, but the nearby
American-controlled air-base of Morón (actually located in the next-door
municipality of Arahal) – which has been going since 1953, of course
does. You’ll need a passport to make it past the heavily-armed gate and
on to the PX store...
Another town on our list is Chiclana de la Frontera.
It is just up the road from both Conil de la Frontera and Vejer de la
Frontera. There must have been a gleam in the eye of King Fernándo IV
when he got into the swing of naming his towns in the Most Loyal
Province of Cádiz...
Chiclana is just 24 kms south of the city of Cádiz and has become a
tourist resort with the largest number of hotel beds anywhere within
the province. With a population of over 84,000, the town is only
marginally smaller than its nearby capital city. The town is noted for
its monuments and its wineries.
Next door’s Conil de la Frontera, again in
reference to the far-off ‘frontier’ with Granada, is a beautiful resort
which grows five-fold during the summer season.
The ‘frontier’ town with the most charm must nevertheless go to Vejer de la Frontera,
a small coastal town with a view of the Atlantic. Vejer is a member of
the ‘Prettiest Towns in Spain Association’ and is a maze of narrow
streets and white houses.
I like the story of how a Moorish prince and his Christian damsel
were forced to leave Vejer as the enemy forces arrived. She tearful, he
defiant. ‘I’ll build you another town as pretty as this one’, he
promised her and, back in North Africa, that’s what he did, building in
her name the beautiful turquoise-blue town of Chauen.
Moving beyond the frontiers of Andalucía (well, barely), mention should be made of Murcia’s frontier town. Puerto Lumbreras, the Port of Lights (roughly),
may have been a trading or military port, but it is around 32
kilometres from the coast and thus its name refers to its frontier
status, as it is separated from Almería’s Arab-sounding Huercal Overa on
the other side of the wide no-man’s-land strip, in this case some 23
kilometes, and was a heavily-garrisoned fortress-town.
For two hundred years, the sometimes uneasy border between the
Christian and Moorish cultures stood until Spain’s famous ‘Catholic
Kings’, Fernándo of Aragon and Isabela of Castille, brought the
‘re-conquest’ to an end in 1492, and Spain was born from the ashes.
