A Scottish King lost his heart to Málaga: The scenes Hollywood didn't show

“I GAVE YOU my heart, but the very next day you threw it away,” was the beyond-the-grave reproach Scotland's King Robert I never made to his right-hand man, Sir James Douglas, as far as we know – but who, in a roundabout way, did exactly that.

Fans of Mel Gibson, of Scottish culture and history, or both – and those who just love a good battle on screen – may or may not be aware of what links their favourite epic, Braveheart, with the province of Málaga.

Long before Hollywood was invented, or the American continent even known about to anyone bar its native inhabitants, the original script of the blockbuster film was being written in real life; whether or not what eventually appeared in the cinema bore any resemblance is another matter and probably unknown, as none of the cast of the first version is alive to fact-check it for us.

Although if you were in Scotland at the beginning of the 14th century and you're reading this, we're sorry for making sweeping assumptions and would love to hear from you.

We'd primarily like you to clarify whether Mel Gibson's lead character, William Wallace, ever met King Robert I in person as the film claims, given that there's apparently no evidence their paths ever crossed in reality.

This said, we do know that the short sequel to the 'real' Braveheart never made the box-office, though. The bit where a soldier in the south of Spain wore someone else's heart on his sleeve – or rather, around his neck.

Body and soul disunited...and how Sir James got distracted

Robert I of Scotland did not bother with a referendum when he achieved independence for the region, which was a separate country from the rest of what we now know as the United Kingdom until the Union Act of May 1, 1707 joined it to England.

And on his death-bed, the monarch (played by Angus MacFadyen in the film) declared that he wanted his body to be buried in Scotland, and his heart in Jerusalem.

Sir James promised faithfully to the dying 'Robert the Bruce', as he was more popularly known, that he would carry out his wishes, and ordered the King's heart to be extracted from him posthumously and embalmed.

It was placed inside a large silver locket, which Sir James wore on a chain and vowed not to take off until he reached the Middle Eastern city.

Getting there would take long months, and started with crossing the Channel between England and France, then heading down to Spain's far south and the port of Sevilla.

Sevilla does not have a coast, but it is sliced by the huge Guadalquivir river, which runs into the sea, so it does, indeed, have a port, and it was here that Sir James Douglas would be welcomed by Alfonso XI 'The Just', monarch and ruler of the Kingdom of Castilla – the western half of mainland Spain until the marriage of Queen Isabel I and King Fernando II, the 'Catholic monarchs', united the nation by joining Castilla with the eastern Kingdom of Aragón.

Alfonso XI, who was on the throne from 1311 to 1350, took advantage of Sir James' appearance in Sevilla to ask his help in conquering La Estrella castle in the town of Teba, in the north-eastern part of the province of Málaga and about 70 kilometres from Málaga city.

The King of Castilla wanted to seize the castle from the Moors and the Muslim King Muhammad IV of Granada, and Sir 'Black Douglas', as he was widely known, was a passing recruit to the cause.

During the battle, whilst galloping into the fray, 'Black Douglas' is documented to have said to the soul of Robert the Bruce: “Now go before us as you would have wished to do, and I will follow you or die.”

At this, Sir James flung the locket with the deceased King's heart in it onto the ground in the middle of Teba, in front of his horse, in order to 'follow' it.

Scotland, the home where the heart is

This unusual form of throwing down a gauntlet, using an internal organ instead of a glove, did not bring 'Black Douglas' the luck and ghostly guidance he hoped for; he and his men were killed in the battle of Teba just minutes after the heart gesture.

Which meant Braveheart's brave heart was discarded, forgotten about, on a street in a Málaga village.

King Alfonso XI himself mentioned it in his memoirs, writing that 'the Scotsman hurled his body against the enemies of the Cross'.

Soon afterwards, the Moors were overcome and Muhammad IV of Granada declared a vassal, or subordinate, of the King of Castilla in 1331, a year after Sir James' last battle.

But the Muslim soldiers retrieved Robert the Bruce's heart, and extracted Sir James' from his inert body, keeping them as relics of the battle.

Eventually, though, they decided to return the hearts to the land that had created the latter's, and the land where the former's stopped beating.

They had them sent to Scotland, although despite Robert the Bruce's having been its King and the return of his ticker to the territory sounding like a full-circle homecoming, the late monarch was, in fact, born in Essex, England; he was Anglo-Norman, and his first language was French.

Robert the Bruce's heart was buried in Melrose Abbey and that of 'Black Douglas' in St Bride's Church.

They remain in their respective resting places nearly 700 years on – and the Scottish town of Melrose itself has been twinned with Teba since 1989.

In the heart of the province of Málaga: What to see in Teba

If you're a Braveheart fan, Teba – part of southern Spain's picturesque 'white villages' network – is an obligatory pit-stop on your Costa del Sol holidays, especially between August 23 and 25 in a non-Covid year: These are the dates when the annual 'Scottish Festival' takes place.

Themed on the Mediaeval era and with plenty of tartan, the fiesta re-enacts the battle in which Sir James lost his heart and that of Robert the Bruce.

“A noble heart is never at peace if it has no freedom,” is the festival slogan – almost certainly based upon William Wallace's crying out the F-word just before his execution at the end of the film.

You also need to take a selfie in the Plaza de España – that's where a monument in tribute to Sir James has been set up.

And you cannot leave without taking a tour of that infamous castle, ownership of which cost 'Black Douglas' his life and prevented Robert the Bruce's heart from reaching its destination in Jerusalem.

La Estrella, built in the 12th century, is the biggest castle in the whole of the province and is a national heritage site, reasonably well-preserved, and the structure and its grounds fill up 25,000 square metres, or about eight acres.

If you're Scottish or have links to Scotland, you're likely to arouse some excitement within this close-knit community of just 3,500 inhabitants – and if you can ever get away and are still standing after all the drinks bought for you off the back of your Caledonian connection, you could do worse than take a tour of its historical buildings, such as the Baroque Santa Cruz church, built in the style and era of Sevilla cathedral, the largest in Spain; the beautiful façade of the 15th-century San Francisco Convent, and the quaint little hermitage chapels of Nuestro Padre Jesús Nazareno ('Our Father Jesus of Nazareth') and Nuestra Señora del Carmen ('Our Lady of Carmen').

Pop into the local history and archaeology museum, too – practically every town in Spain, however small, has one of these, which are normally free of charge to enter and house artefacts dating back hundreds or even thousands of years unearthed close by or donated by residents.

These local museums can be fascinating to visit, giving a very real, tangible insight into what life was like in bygone eras in your town, allowing you to imagine what they might have looked like and what the people did in the Mediaeval Moorish period, the Roman times, or even the prehistoric Iberian era.

Anything on display in Teba's archaeology museum from around the year 1330 would have been a matter of metres away from Robert the Bruce's second-in-command and would have witnessed the King of Scotland's heart being hurled to the ground.

If only artefacts could talk, or castles.

Even though they can't, we bet that after a trip to Teba, you'll be downloading the film or sourcing the DVD of Braveheart and watching it again through newly-informed eyes.