Asturian-American Migration Forum

I love the music.

Aren't there a couple of songs that tell how strong the Asturians were against the Muslims?

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trans. Art

Me encanta la música.

Hay canciones que hablan de la forteleza del los asturianos contra los musulmanes, ¿no?

Hi, Joe, wellcome to the forum.

Yes, there are some songs in the Asturian folklore that mention the Moors. This is an historical baggage which dates from the Middle Ages. The Asturians fought against the Moors mainly between more or less the 8th and the 12th centuries, and later with a lesser intensity, but the Moors are still present in the southern part of the Iberian Peninsule untill 1492.

This did the effect of first appear and later maintain a popular epic, whose main manifestation were the "romances" (folk recitations, normally told but some of them with music).

Other tardive historical facts did that these old traces were reinforced, as for example the colonial war in Morocco at the beggining of 20th century, or in the 30's the repression of the Asturian Revolution (1934) and later the Civil War (1936-39). In these two episodies were Moorish African troops and the Spanish Foreign Legion who were charged of fight against Asturians, as Franco thought that it was necessary to use colonial troops, very cruel, to win the war where Asturians are a very respectable enemy.

And the third component of the Moors' presence in Asturian folklore are the folk tales of the mithology, where any thing seeming magic, surnatural or simply very old was attributed to the Moors, from Iron Age hillforts to the "fairy people".

This is the triple reason of Moors' mentions in lyrics, recitations and folk tales.

Whishes

In fairness, for most of the time when the Moors occupied parts of Spain they were relativey tolerant of Christians and Jews. Franco's troops had no such redeeming characteristic toward the Asturians. It was enough to simply be defined as the enemy.

Yesterday, newspaper El Pais published a review on a documentary film about the Moroccan soldiers in the Civil War:

http://www.elpais.com/articulo/arte/mor ... rt_13/Tes/

I think it's related with the previous post in this thread. This is my tranlation:


The filmmaker from Melilla Driss Deiback rebuilt in the documentary “The Losers” the tragedy of the thousands of Moroccans who fought in the Civil War

Nearly a hundred thousand Moroccans between 16 and 50 years fought in the Spanish Civil War. They were recruited by the Franco’s army in the cabilas of the Northern Protectorate (former Spanish Morocco) and the squalid townships of Ifni (former Spanish Sahara), and transferred to the Iberian Peninsule in German (nazi) boats and planes. During the three years that war took, they participated in all battle fronts and left a terrible memories of assaults on blood and fire, looting (having the right to plunder), rapes and killings. Neither of them went well removed. For the 20,000 who died in combat it must to add those who died of illnesses and war’s mutilated. When the war ended, those who remained alive were discharged and repatriated without contemplations.

A documentary film has now reached the screens to rescue their peculiar crusade, “The Losers”, led by Melilla’s director Driss Deiback, stems from those events of the thirties, and through the testimony of survivors and analysis from specialists like Juan Goytisolo, Rosa Maria de Madariaga or Jose Maria Ridao, tries to link them with the conflict between the Muslim culture and the civilizations of Christian root.

No-Do (Noticiarios y Documentales), the news that the Franco regime forced to cast all cinemas before the screening of films, explained the beginning of this story: "All the Muslims of our Protectorate in Morocco, impregnated of the love and the culture that in them Spain has seeded, go in immediate relief when listening the trumpets of the call of Occident (...) Neither levies nor propaganda. Volunteers nothing else. By mandate of the heart ".

The reality was quite different. The rebel militaries recruited Moroccans through the network of friend kaids (tribal chiefs) who African Army had woven over the past years. The decoy was economic: a roughly 180 pesetas a month salary, two months in advance, and four kilograms of sugar, a can of olive oil and many breads as children the enlisted families had. Pushed by hunger, thousands of families sent their children to the slaughter.

In the documentary are interviewed several of those soldiers. One of them is called Mimou Mohammedi. Converted into a venerable old man, graphically summarizes what they did with them: “They put us as cats into a sack, loosen to us in Spain and they said to us: to shoot or to die ". Encouraged by the officials, they were applied to the task with the same brutality who had learned few years before fighting against the Spaniards in the wars of Africa: gutings, decapitations and mutilations of ears, noses and testicles. The generals threw their fame of savages. From the radio of Seville, General Queipo de Llano promised to the "castrated Republicans" that their women soon would know the manhood at the hands of those troops.

"You will return to your towns with gold slippers", promised them Franco. But when the fight finished he chased them to kicks. They were licensed and repatriated to the force. Certain that he retained a few thousands to fight against maquis, but also he fired them in the Fifties, once eliminated the guerrilla threat. He only kept the handful of members of his Moor Guard, who during decades acted like showy equestrian escort around the Rolls Royce (gift of Hitler) in which the dictator moved for the official acts.

The medals that the Government of the “Caudillo” gave to the Moroccan soldiers oxidized soon. Hammou el Houcine, that now is Spanish citizen and lives in Melilla, enumerates his eight condecorations, including the coveted Laureate of San Fernando. "I don’t receipt by them nor a cent", assures. His companion Amar Lazar shows to the camera the last receipt that the Ministry of Finance has sent to him: "they say to me that all my medals expired. I have left only the one of Sufferings by the Mother Country. By it they pay to me 5.17 euros to the month ". More dramatic still it is the situation of the widows and the orphans of those who died in the fight. They never have received any pension since then and living in misery..

The role played by Moroccan soldiers in the Civil War was fire recorded in the Spanish imagination. Portrayed as savages by Republicans and despised as "Moor friends" with the Franco regime, public opinion has failed to get rid of the old cliches, even after thirty years of democracy. A good example are the cemeteries where those soldiers were buried without any identification and now nor the municipalities nor the State recognized as such. In the tombs of the Asturias’one it has sprouted trees that now a company wants to cut to convert the place into a golf course. The Granada’s one, next to the Alhambra, is maintained, alegally, by the Muslims of the province.

Clearly, the fear to the Moors remains entrenched in Spain. To explain it, the writer Juan Goytisolo goes back far beyond the Civil War until the confrontation that for centuries there were between Al Andalus and the Christian emerging nations. "We forged a terrible image of the Moor. Laugh you of which the Nazis could write on the Jews. And the Church was responsible for all that great." Faced with the large stone cross the Valley of the Fallen, the writer and journalist Jose Maria Ridao sentence: "The hatred of the Moor is a consequence that the idea of being Spanish has been associated with the status of Christian, and subsequently the Catholic condition. "

But there is a question that the documentary by Driss Deiback does not formulate: exists in Morocco an inverse feeling to hatred to the Moor? The writer Carlos Lencero lived for several years in the Riff (mountainous region of Morocco). His host was an older man who had fought in the war in Spain. One day, Lencero noted the apparent contradiction supposed to have fought against Franco in Morocco and then to fight as his allied in Spain. The elder raised eyebrows with surprise: "Why are you surprised?" He said. "We always did the same thing: kill Spaniards."

En las tumbas del de Asturias han brotado árboles que ahora una empresa quiere talar para convertir el lugar en un campo de golf.

Carlos, sabes tu si con esta menciontuya se refiere al cementerio marroqui de muertos de la guerra civil que esta a lo largo de la carretera N634 entre Navia y Luarca (no me acuerdo exactamente del sitio)

Cuando era pequeno recuerdo subir a la cima del Naranco en Oviedo, donde habia una pequena estatua en memoria a los Regulares que estuvieron alli durante la Guerra Civil. Yo me imaginaba que la media luna de los Regulares lo que simbolizaba era los moros, Pelayo y la Reconquista...

In the tombs of the Asturias’one it has sprouted trees that now a company wants to cut to convert the place into a golf course.

Carlos, do you know if by the Asturias one is referring to the cementery built along the road N-634 between Navia - Luarca. (I can't remember the place)

When I was a kid I remember going to the top of Naranco mountain in Oviedo where there was a symbol of homage to the Regulares of Melilla that were posted during the Civil War. I always thought that the crescent of the estatue was because of Pelayo, the moors and the Reconquest !

Pues sí, Granda, precisamente se trata del que está situado en la parroquia valdesana de Barcia:



Puerta principal del cementerio moro - Main entrance to the Moor cemetery near Luarca, Asturies.

No está mal, lo de Pelayo y todo eso

Pues nun sei vos, pero mia guela tenia-y panicu a lo que chamaba 'la guardia mora'. Gracias por colgar la semeya del cementeriu de Barcia, Carlos, pero you nun vou aveirame nunca a esi sitiu. Pa min, ia la mesma alerxa que-y tengo al valle de los caidos de Franco. Thanks, but no thanks.

Bob wrote:In fairness, for most of the time when the Moors occupied parts of Spain they were relativey tolerant of Christians and Jews. Franco's troops had no such redeeming characteristic toward the Asturians. It was enough to simply be defined as the enemy.

Actually, in fairness the moors had no such redeeming quality. What they did was permit the private worship given a payment of yizía and jarai (religious and land taxes) allways to be payed submissively (by which I mean that a Christian in Spain could not send a servantt o pay, for example, but rather had to go in person and admit the superiority of the muslem conquerors). That supposed tolerance only existed in those parts of the peninsula that capitulated without fighting, and included the "silencing of the churches" (elimination of church bells) and a prohibition of any religious expression outside of a church. If the territory had resisted the moors, or if the population refused to pay the yizía and jarai, the population was either forced to conversion or slaughtered. This of course in the periods of greater tolerance, which where few and short-lived, the rest of the time different more repressive laws were instated. It all depended on who was ruling and what the sociopolitical stage dictated at a given time.

As far as Asturias goes, the only time of peace I can remember was with Mauregato, whith whom the Asturians were forced to face the humiliation of sending not only an economic tribute but the fabled hundred maidens, fifty noble, fifty commoners, to the califate in Córdoba. The idea of moorish tolerance is a common misconception which stems mostly from the 19th century orientalist movement's idealization of Al-Andalus which, although based on some grains of truth, sistematicaly distort the actual history of moorish Spain, and especially that of the struggle between the Christians and Moors.

Yes, but were not the Moors - in the context of their time - more praiseworthy than Ferdinand and Isabella, who expelled the Jews from Spain? I think it is a bit unfair to judge the past by modern standards (and even by modern standards, we have many who are not at all praiseworthy from my perspective).

If we want to avoid judging by modern standards, then we can't say Isabel and Ferdinand were objectionable in that they, in expelling the moors, were merely following and in fact brining to an end the entire history of Spain from the battle of Covadonga untill 1492 (the reconquest, obviously). In those times, the expulsion of dissident groups was not something strange. Even in non-Christian societies, the Muslems having expelled Christians from the arabian peninsula and even Syria (considered at the time along with Egipt as part of the holy land). We have to take into consideration that at that time religion and politics were inseparable, and thus having a religious group other than that of the ruling class was consenting possible political uprisings. I see no problem with finding these things objectionable, as we are forced to see this from our cultural and historical perspective, wether we try to avoid it as much as possible or not, in fact, I believe that a radical condemnation of the moors in Spain is just as bad as their idealization. Al-Andalus was a vibrant, rich and interesting kingdom with its positive and negative aspects, I simply don't believe that saying that the medieval moors were more tolerant than the medieval Christians can be justified when faced with the historical evidence.

Hola a todos,

Con respecto al tema de los moros, siento que en españa el tema se toma como parciales de un bando o de otro y no de manera más o menos objetiva.

La historia, que la escriben a menudo los vencedores, suele estar adornada y muchas veces totalmente distorsionada, por lo que los buscadores de la verdad de los hechos y situaciónes, debemos siempre buscar el matiz de las verdades consolidadas.

Esto para mi quiere decir revisar los estudios acerca de las maravillas del Al-Andalus, pero también las exageraciónes y la épica covadonguista y Pelayista, a la cual no soy muy afecto.

De lo que si soy parcial es en la dimensión cultural de cada uno de los modelos civilizatorios, los cristianos vivían una época de oscuridad e incertidumbre, en el Norte, mientras que el Sur era sinónimo de Civilización, florecimiento de las artes, estudios religiosos y el arte.

Con respecto a los Moros, mouros y mouras, del folclore Asturiano y Gallego, creo que hay unas teorias muy interesantes, que afirman que el término MORO o MAURO, provienen de maur=obscuro, en alguna lengua antigua que no recuerdo si es céltica o indoeuropea.

El asunto es que dentro de el mismo término quedaron los seres miticos, mezclados con los Moros históricos, lo cual constituye un punto muy interesante de inicio de una investigación acerca de aquellos "seres obscuros" que en muchas mitologías de la zona se asocian con los gentiles, los antiguos habitantes míticos que muchas veces se los describe como retirados a otros mundos paralelos al nuestro, y suelen guardar Menhires o dólmenes.

yo tengo oído que hay una historia que cuenta como el Rey Pelayo muy mujeriego el , tiene una relación con la hija de un rey moro . Este al enterarse de esta relación ordena dar muerte al rey Pelayo que huye a esconderse a Covadonga . Allí hace frente a los moros que con mucha suerte son vencidos y así comienza la leyenda de la reconquista. No me acuerdo muy bien quien me la contó , si recuerdo que era yo guaje.

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Yo hebo sintío qu'hai una hestoria que cunta cómu'l Rei Pelayu, enforma correnderu elli, tien una espirica cola fía de un rei moru. Ésti al pescanciar el fechu de la rellación manda da-y muerte al Rei Pelayu que fuxe a guariase'n Covadonga. Ellí encaria a los moros que con muncha xorra foron vencíos y asina entama la lleenda la reconquista. Nun m'alcuerdo bien de quién me la cuntare, pero alcuérdome que yo yera guah.e

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I've heard a tale that tells hoy the King Pelayu, very womanizer, he,has an affair with the daughter of a Moor king. When he discovers the fact he orders King Pelayu to be killed, who escapes to hyde in Covadonga. There he stands up against the Moors and with lots of luck, they were defeated and this is how the legend of the Reconquest begins. I'm not sure about who did tell me the story, but I remember that I was a child.