Noisy they may be, colourful they certainly are, and anyone who has lived in Spain for more than a few months cannot have missed the country’s vivacious, energetic fiestas.
Although they range from mildly bizarre to downright crazy at times, and Semana Santa is the ideal time to move to a remote country location for a week or to totally sound-proof your house, Spain without its fiestas would be like paella without the rice – a massive chunk of its basic essence missing and, in fact, near-impossible to imagine.
Given their centuries-old tradition and unquestioning participation by townspeople aged from a few days to over eighty years old, the future of the fiestas seems set in stone and it is hard to believe that anything could rock the their solid foundations.
Especially political correctness, which those of us originally from the UK thought we had left behind on the tarmac at Gatwick.
Yet last week, President of the Spanish Federation of Islamic Religious Entities (FEERI), Extremadura-born Félix Herrero, demanded that the hugely-popular Moors and Christians festival, celebrated in Aragón, Andalucía and all over eastern Spain, be scrapped.
He believes that a pageant commemorating the expulsion of the Arabs from the Peninsula by the Christians ‘has no place in today’s democratic Spain’.
He even went as far as to describe them as ‘cultural genocide’.
“How would the Spanish react if there was a fiesta celebrating the arrival of Franco’s troops, and the resulting punishment they meted out on the people?” Herrero commented.
Herrero, who is also the Islamic leader of La Unión mosque in Málaga, has called for the partying to stop ‘in the interests of harmonious coexistence’.
Yet it is clear even at first glance that Spain’s fiestas promote precisely that – harmonious coexistence. Citizens of all ages and walks of life rehearse together, parade together and finally eat and drink together until the early hours in marquées scattered around the towns - often in the middle of the road, yet few people would complain too loudly about traffic obstruction or the inability to park, accepting that the festivities simply represent a fundamental part of the town’s heritage and society.
Even those who have seen the same parades and acts year after year for decades continue to watch them avidly – not only those who were born in the locality but those who have come from other parts of Spain or from overseas to live there.
Later, though, Herrero partially retracted his request, saying that he only wanted to see the battles between the Moors and the Christians

abolished. The Imam admitted he had only seen the festival once, in Alcoi 30 years ago, and that it ‘did not seem offensive’.

Just a bit of fun?
Thankfully, the harmless nature of these enjoyable festivals is recognised by other members of Muslim society.
Leader of the Islamic Community of Alicante, Majed Kadem, does not consider the Moors and Christians fiesta an attack on either his religion or the Prophet Mohammed.
“It [the fiesta] is a product of a long historical tradition, which should be seen just as it is – a festival. We don’t see it as anything out of the ordinary.”
The president of the Islamic Commission of Spain. Malik Ruiz says he can see nothing wrong with the Moors and Christians, provided there are no elements of them that could be seen as provocative or cause widespread upset to the Islamic community.
To this end, he has called for the suppression of images or acts that might offend Muslims.
By ‘offensive acts’, Ruiz refers to Bocairent’s tradition of filling a papier mâché head depicting Mohammed with fireworks and letting them off, or Beneixama’s custom of destroying a three-metre-high effigy of him with rockets.
Both these Valencia province villages took such events off the programme this year, without any intervention from Islamic leaders.
“It just wasn’t necessary and, as it could hurt some people’s feelings, we decided not to do it,” explains Bocairent’s mayor, Antonio Valdés.

Then and now
Acts of this nature, generally, are performed for their historical relevance and are not designed as anti-Muslim propaganda. Mediaeval Christians had to pay more taxes than the Muslim settlers and there was a strong push to convert to Islam, yet between the 13th and late 15th centuries, a series of bloodthirsty conflicts led to the Muslims being thrown out, tortured or forced to convert to Catholicism, despite the fact that most of these people had never known any other way of life besides that of living in Spain. Effigies of Mohammed being burned or mutilated were not uncommon amongst the extremists during that period.
However, more than five hundred years after the last ethnic cleansing, when Isabella and Fernando threw out the only known remaining Arab settlers from Granada, there is a heightened awareness of causing offence to Muslims and blowing up effigies of Mohammed is seen as too insulting to continue in 21st-century Spain.

Fireworks sparked off by media and misunderstanding
Cartoons featuring Mohammed published in a Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, in September last year provoked extensive upset amongst the country’s Muslim community and led to riots outside Danish embassies in the Middle East.  Jyllands-Posten explained that these drawings were a contribution to debate regarding criticism of Islam and self-censorship, with clear references to fundamentalist terrorism. At least fifty publications worldwide reprinted and translated the cartoons, provoking widespread public disturbance.
Muslims around the globe hit out at being branded terrorists when in reality the Q’ran calls for tolerance, love and respect and forbids murder or suicide. They considered that their religion was being publicly poked fun at. Other Muslims remained unaffected and considered them nothing more than harmless cartoon strips, the type that frequently make a joke of world issues in general.
Last month, the Pope’s speech condemning terrorism in the name of religion created unrest in the Muslim community, leading the pontiff to publicly apologising. Ex-president of Spain, José María Aznar’s response, “the Muslims have never publicly apologised for invading us 800 years ago,” did little to fan the flames.
Misunderstanding on both sides has caused strained relations between many members of Islamic society and non-Muslims in the west.

‘Surprised’ response
Fiesta-goers, Spanish nationals and expats alike, were perplexed at the suggestion that the Moors and Christians fiesta should be banned. Its organisers in Dénia said, “they only represent a slice of our history,” whilst the association behind the event in Villanueva, Castellón, explained that it ‘only serves as an example of harmony between the Moors and the Christians’.
“It’s no different to the English tradition of Guy Fawkes, where we actually ‘celebrate’ someone trying to blow up our own houses of Parliament – and nobody objects about that,” commented a British woman interviewed.
“I don’t understand it. Why do they want to stop the fiesta? Everyone should be able to do as he or she wants – each to their own, I say,” says María, 75, from Oliva.
Alba, 29, holds quite passionate views on the subject. “I wouldn’t go to their countries telling them to stop their traditions, so why should they do the same here? If people don’t like our customs or festivals, they should go back to their own country.”

Where will it end?
Fans of the fiestas began to fear the repercussions of overly politically-correct thinking on long-standing Spanish traditions.
The Fallas, celebrated in the Comunidad Valenciana every March, involve imaginatively-designed, giant effigies depicting local and world issues, usually sending them up, and later setting fire to them. This year, they featured the flood of Chinese textiles into the European market, the crowds of sub-Saharan immigrants scaling the fences separating Ceuta and Melilla from Africa, bird ‘flu and human cloning for medical purposes.
These, if PC thinking grows, could be seen as either racist or making fun of other people’s misfortunes.
This year, many towns scrapped plans to include ninots featuring the cartoons in Jylland-Posten for fear of reprisals.
Spain is clearly a tolerant country, given that it welcomes thousands of foreign residents every year, and as expatriates, we too have adapted, embracing Spanish ways of life and learning to live in harmony with our new neighbours. Yet, whilst respect and understanding for all ways of life, religions, races and cultures is the key to good relations within society, a compromise must be reached before age-old customs and the fun of the fiesta are put in jeopardy.