THE FESTIVAL OF MOORS AND CHRISTIANS OF VILLENA (SPAIN): A CURRENT EXAMPLE OF TOLERANCE AND OTHERNESS AMONG DIFFERENT CULTURES

The festivals of Moors and Christians are very old and important celebrations which are held in most of the countries belonging to the old Spanish empire. Its origin is in the Middle Age, and they spread throughout Spain, Portugal and the old Spanish and Portuguese empires in the Modern Age (Latin America and Philippines, mainly). Although in ancient times they represented the confrontation between Muslims and Christians in Spain during the Middle Age, nowadays they have become festivals of a tolerance and friendly nature, which simply commemorate a period in the History of Spain in which two cultures and two religions lived together. Festival participants and people in general sympathize with the Moorish side and participate in it with pleasure, in such a way that the festival has become an exaltation of the Arab culture in medieval Spain. The objective of the present research work is doing a holistic study of the Moors and Christians celebrations of a specific town, such as Villena, analyzing all aspects of these festivals from all possible points of view. It is, therefore, a multidisciplinary study, which is based fundamentally on the method of historical research, but which will also take into account other aspects of the festivities, such as statistical or literary studies. This article summarizes a much deeper investigation on this subject and exposes the most important conclusions of it.