The World Cup and Spain’s uncomfortable relationship with its Muslim past

'Do not cry like women, for what you could not defend as men', is probably something I would like to think Luis Enrique is telling the selección española on their way back to Spain after losing in a penalty shoot-out to the Atlas Lions last Tuesday. This particular phrase is an adapted adage that pierced the lips of the mother of Abu Abdallah Muhammad XII (known as Boabdil in Spain, the last Emir of Granada) as he wept upon his expulsion from the Iberian Peninsula in 1498 by King Ferdinand VII of Castille.

This epigram is something I, a British-Andalusian, have heard ad nauseam by Arabs and Muslims alike when the subject of Al Andalus is broached. My most recent conversation on this topic was actually with some Moroccan friends, as we jokingly tussled between kicks and passes during the Spain vs. Morocco match. "If Spain loses, give us back Al Andalus". Similar jokes have reverberated throughout the Twittersphere’s of the Western Mediterranean since.

Less so the nature of the jest, it's the acceptance of Al Andalus as being something external to Spanish identity, bothers me. I specifically say Spanish here as Andalusian culture has been monopolised by the grand stage that is modern day Spanish nation-building and the cesspool that are tourism boards in general.

''The around 1 million Moroccans currently living in Spain, report increasing levels of hostility, in line with increasing far-right populism and general anti-Muslim sentiment across Europe. Arguably, their presence in Spain, is viewed by far-right parties such as Vox as an attempt to restore the Iberian Peninsula to Muslim rule, and could explain why Spanish police were on high-alert during Tuesday’s football match, fearing riots after “Ultras” rallied Spaniards on Twitter and Instagram to “protect the streets” from Moroccan supporters.''

Firstly, Al Andalus never belonged to what we know as the modern-day Moroccan state, it was part of the Ummayad Caliphate, the Almorovid Empire after becoming an independent caliphate and then met its doom after fragmenting into various taifas or “mini kingdoms”. Secondly, when the Muslims and Jews were expelled from the Peninsula, these weren’t necessarily Arabs or Moors. They were native Iberians who refused to convert to Catholicism.

Our problematic relationship with Al Andalus is ingrained in the contemporary Spanish psyche, if you ask any Spaniard, who built the Alhambra or the Great Mosque of Córdoba, they will, without pause, answer "the Arabs", "the Muslims". As if Federico García Lorca didn’t lament the Alhambra in his poems, as if we don’t enjoy some aceitunas (zaytoun, olives) on a plastic chair on the sotea (sota’a, roof terrace) outside our grandmother’s house in the barrio (neighbourhood).

Why are we so quick to “other” our own history, when it evidently permeates our modern language and cultural surroundings? Yes, the Italians say the Romans built the Colosseum, but even then, they simultaneously protect and defend it as something wholly Italian, despite Italy only truly existing as a modern nation-state from 1871 - 1,800 years after the founding of the stadium. A significantly longer lapse between the creation of the modern state of Spain and the Alhambra.

In the last Roman census of Hispania (Roman Spain), the population stood at around 6 million. With the later influx of the Visigoth tribes, this elevated the number of the native population by a meagre 80,000. Unless all 6,080,000 inhabitants were hiding in the mountains of Basque Country, when Tariq ibn Ziyad and his Amazigh warriors conquered the Iberian Peninsula in 711 AD, there must have been a populous these armies actually conquered.

Moreover, there’s a consensus amongst European historians that a small number of Amazigh and Arab Muslims settled the land, and majority of the population (around 80%) ended up converting to Islam and becoming arabised. So, it begs the question, who actually built the Alhambra? Not the Moors, but the great grandparents of modern day Spaniards.

If my grandfather in Cádiz, was speaking Arabic 800 years ago, would that have made him any less gaditano or Iberian?

However, whilst Spain is a secular country, the culture and people are overwhelmingly theocratic, especially when it comes to the subject of Al Andalus. Cathedrals, Baroque architecture and the (what feels like) a thousand devotions of the Virgin Mary are inextricably ours and anything Muslim in character is considered theirs. We may as well have the Alhambra hoisted by a crane and thrown at the feet of King Mohammad VI in Rabat with that line of thinking.

To answer this question, we must look at the issues of Spanish society and politics since 1498 – primarily the genocidal and racialised legacy of the colonisation of the Americas. The 40 year-long fascist dictatorship of Francisco Franco also sought to erase the history books and replaced over 800 years of Muslim rule in Spain with a lame and reductive; “the Arabs came, and then they left”, focusing more on Spain’s respectively brief Roman and Visigoth history to instil a sense of a “white Catholic Spain”. It was under this particular version of Spain, you couldn’t even apply for a Spanish national identity card unless you were baptised.

Next up, we're taking back Al Andalus.

— لينة (@LinahAlsaafin) December 6, 2022

By extension, the around 1 million Moroccans currently living in Spain, report increasing levels of hostility, in line with increasing far-right populism and general anti-Muslim sentiment across Europe. Arguably, their presence in Spain, is viewed by far-right parties such as Vox as an attempt to restore the Iberian Peninsula to Muslim rule, and could explain why Spanish police were on high-alert during Tuesday’s football match, fearing riots after “Ultras” rallied Spaniards on Twitter and Instagram to “protect the streets” from Moroccan supporters.

This anti-Arabness in Spain is rooted in an ardent hypocrisy that burns so bright it blinds far-right nationalists across the country. If you look at any of the iconography used in “Visit Spain” or “Andalucía Loves You” posters, there is consistent use of azulejos (Moorish azelij tile work). If we continue this line of thinking of us versus them, why are we using something that belongs to the Arabs we want to “protect our streets from” to market our country to tourists? It’s illogical, inaccurate and rooted in desperate self-hatred.

With respect, this is not to dismiss the nostalgia that Arabs and Muslims cherish towards Al Andalus, as mentioned earlier, many North Africans have Iberian heritage and there are families in Morocco that still have the keys to their medieval homes in Córdoba and Granada.

Moreover, the sensational melodies in Raï music of Oran, Algeria has heavy Andalusian influence, as does the traditional music of Tetouan and Tangiers in Morocco (known as Andalusi music in North Africa). Many cities in Morocco, such as Chefchouen, were founded by a contingent of Andalusí refugees in 1471, and there they built their abodes to reflect their memories of Granada.

Let’s also not forget our shared history of being conquered by the Romans and Byzantines, and its impact on trade, knowledge sharing and migration. We were one people many times over, yet Al Andalus is still not a shared, but divided.

Many Spaniards are uncomfortable with their Arab-Muslim past and it’s of no shock that the attitudes towards the Muslim community in Spain which have allowed far-right islamophobic politicians such as Santiago Abascal (leader of the Vox party) to succeed, are connected to the psychological acceptance of Al Andalus as something that is ours. Yet it continues to be something that is erased, suppressed and ultimately exported through daily conversations or memes on twitter.

You cannot escape the impact of Al Andalus, it is a concomitant echoless scream and deafening whisper. The origins of flamenco, gastronomy, architecture toponyms such as Gibraltar (Jabal al Tareq) or Benalmádena (Beni al Madena), and even agricultural methods are all inheritance from our forefathers, and not exclusively that of Morocco or Achraf Hakimi.

Steffani Garcia is a British-Andalusian currently residing in London. She holds an MA in International Relations & Global Diplomacy from SOAS with a specialism on US Foreign Policy in Latin America and Muslims in Spain.

Follow them on Twitter: @churrochula

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Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author, and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.