The Moors Last Stand
Fiesta to Commemmorate the Anniversary of the Taking of Granada
The Moors finally lost their battle to the Catholic Kings, and after eight centuries of rule the last stronghold of Granada fell, along with the Alhambra Palace
The 515th anniversary of the fall of Granada was celebrated on January 2nd 2008. Every year this date is commemorated as the day the Moors fell to the Catholic Kings - Ferdinand and Isabella.
Over 6,000 people, tourists and locals alike took part in the fiesta which began at 11.30am with street parades and a visit to the Alhambra Palace.
The Nasrid Kingdom at one time covered most of the Almería, Granada and Málaga provinces and included parts of the provinces of Cádiz, Córdoba and Jaén – nearly all of what is now Andalucia.
The final ten years of the Reconquest of Spain began in 1481. It was a slow progress for the Catholic Kings. They began to take control over the western part of the Nasrid Kingdom and by 1489 had won the control of the eastern provinces, leaving only the Kingdom of Granada which only consisted of Granada City and the Alpujarras.
The final capitulation of Granada by Abu ‘Abd Allah Muhammad, the Moorish king known to the Spanish as Boabdil, was on 25 November 1491.
The end of eight hundred years of Moorish rule in Al-Andalus and after a year-long siege the keys of the Alhambra Palace were handed by Boabdil over to Ferdinand and Isabella’s right-hand man, Gutierre de Cárdenas. The date was 2nd January 1492, which today is known as “la Toma de Granada,” or “the Taking of Granada.”
According to legend, Boabdil looked back just once after leaving his beloved city and palace, as he headed to exile in his remaining lands in the Alpujarras area. The place where he stopped and looked at the palace he was forced to leave behind is now known as ‘el Suspiro del Moro’ – ‘the Sigh of the Moor.’
A word of wisdom but not of comfort was offered by his mother “You do well to weep like a woman for what you could not defend like a man.”
Boabdil or Abu ‘Abd Allah Muhammad, Muhammad XII, left the Alpujarras only a few years later sailing from Al-Andalus to the North African coast - the land of his forefathers, he died in Fez in 1527.
Santa Fe, which had become a military camp in 1489 for the Catholic monarchs’ siege of Granada suffered major destruction in a fire in 1491, and was ordered to be re- built in the shape of a cross and engraved with - Santa Fe – Holy Faith – to symbolize and immortalize the long and bloody fight by the Christian against the Moors.
Other dates for the Alhambra -Dali and Picasso
The Wonder of the Alhambra article
