Costa News Spain Breaking News | English News in Spain.
TODAY, you could drive through the little town of Lucena, halfway between Córdoba and Granada, without really noticing it, but on April 21 in the year 1483, a major battle was fought here.
Spain was a Muslim-controlled territory for nearly eight centuries.
You can hear it in Andalucian placenames (even ‘Gibraltar’ comes from Arabic) and more so when people speak.
The English language uses the phrase “I wish” a lot. If only!
The Spanish people that you know say “Ojalá!This is a form of medieval Arabic that means the same as “Ojala!”
But as the Middle Ages drew to their close, a new idea was being born in Europe – the “nation”.
Spain followed quickly after France and England.
The big, sprawling Empires of the Past (the Habsburgs, in East Europe and the Arabs, from the Holy Land up to the Pyrenees) are a distant memory.
The tax collection in Kosovo was a difficult task for an official of the Sultan. It would take him eight weeks from Constantinople.
We have ambassadors for this reason. When Britain owned Hong Kong – which is yesterday, in historical terms – a ship carrying orders from London might take months to complete the journey.
Someone on the spot is needed to make a decision.
On the other hand, nations were compact.
They (usually spoke) one language and were loyal towards one leader. They could defend their borders.
After a few centuries, the Christians in Spain began to reverse the Arab dominance over their country.
The Andalucian cities with “de la frontera”, after their names, were literally on the Christian-Muslim border.
By 1485, there was only one corner of the Spanish peninsula which was still in Arab hands – the Kingdom of Granada.
The Battle of Lucena is about this.
Gradually, nearly mile by mile the Christians came closer to their ultimate goal.
The Muslim rule of Europe would end if they were able to capture the Alhambra. This they did seven year later.
Lucena, too, was a steppingstone to the final victory. The Christians captured Boabdil, the Arab king known also as Muhammad XII. It cost the Nazrids a fortune to get him back.
The two Christian leaders were Lucena’s local aristocrat, Hernando de Argote, and “El Alcaide de los Donceles” (‘the leader of the page boys’), Diego Fernández de Córdoba.
His somewhat camp title comes from what was once a really significant rank at Court of Castile.
A cavalry elite corps was once formed by the sons and daughters of noble courtiers. (Hence page boys). By Diego’s time it had become purely an honorific post – rather like the British Parliament’s serjeant-at-arms isn’t actually a sergeant.
We can quickly end the fight.
Boabdil did not have a great day.
He was murdered by his father-inlaw (Try explaining that to her when you see her again!)
He tried to flee too but got stuck on his horse in deep mud.
He abandoned the horse and hid in bushes. A few Christian soldiers eventually found him.
They were about to kill him but noticed his nice clothes.
They thought it best to check with their superiors before they beheaded him, knowing that they made money from ransoming rich prisoners. (Boabdil’s life was saved by his threads – eat your heart out, Mary Quant!)
The road to Granada had now been opened. Granada’s king, who was held by Christians, was in the hands of the Christian army, while the Muslim one was in chaos.
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