5 million muslims demand Spanish nationality

Hasna Daoud, shows a songbook of lyrics Andalusian / PEPE FERRER

A few pieces of wood, a lock and a key. The journey time is now Akel Abdelghafar the hook, as mural over the fireplace in his house in Chefchaouen. These are the remains of the door of the house her family had in Granada a few years before the King Boabdil, to leave for exile Moroccan "cry like a woman so he could not defend like a man." For 500 years they were stuck in an old bag that accompanied all his ancestors as the most precious of treasures. They have survived wars, migration, poverty, impossible love stories and irreversible hatred, but always covered with the pride of that memory that serves as a lifeline to its origin. Because the day I decided to get them out of that Abdelghafar bag, clean and sort on a wooden box got exorcise the past. No, I would not return to Granada, the lost paradise definitely left behind, and that key would not open any doors that lock or block new horizons for the future. Its recapture was over ...

The man who put those symbols in that sack called Ibrahim Ben Ali and was one of the 300,000 who left the Andalusian Moorish kingdom when the Catholic Kings conquered it. He later took the surname of the Akel (lucid mind) because it was one of the few who saw it coming was coming to. In 1490 he sold his numerous properties, took his family and crossed the Strait of Gibraltar to start a new life in these harsh mountains of the Rif. Several decades after those neighbors, as rich as he had in the Albaicin, came to ask impoverished refuge after being driven from their homes by that decree, signed on February 14, 1502 by Queen Isabella, in which ordered them to turn to the Christian faith or to march forever leaving everything they had. Now Abdelghafar, retired from her job as a bank manager, has a charming hotel near one of the gates of the walls of Chefchaouen, a dog that you gave in Granada and their children studying in that university. They, at least, they have gotten back.

No and again, as they prayed or jofores andalusíes prophecies, but a "moral reparation" is seeking the descendants of those Andalusian-five million only in Morocco, according to some historians, in this age where secular institutions begin to apologize for past mistakes. So, last July 24, the president of the Spanish Islamic Board, Mansur Escudero, filed in the Registry of the Ministry of Presidency of the Andalusian official request to recognize the primary right to Spanish citizenship to all descendants of these expelled Moors. "The Immigration Act of 1985 had already granted such preferential treatment, through Article 22.1 of the Civil Code, the Sephardic Jews, equating to Latin American, Portuguese, Filipinos, Andorra, Equatorial Guinea and Gibraltar. That is, all those who had any historical or blood relationship with Spain. However, they forgot the Andalusians, who were more Spanish than anyone because they were born and lived for eight centuries in Península.Por believe that in this time of alliance of civilizations is time to redress this historical oblivion and that unfairness "Mansur said.

In practical terms this means that, while a Moroccan, for example, has to be up to 10 years living in Spain for a Spanish passport, Sephardic Jew or any citizen of those nations could get it in a third time. "But do not worry the Spanish because I do not intend to invade or in the case of a request for legal nationality mass. Fortunately, most of the descendants live prosperously andalusíes migrate and do not need to live better. Just pretend moral satisfaction for the trauma of the expulsion of the losers of that Spanish civil war. Because Muslims of Granada were so much like Christians who came from Castile, "says the historian meanwhile chefchouaní Raisuni Ali.

This historical repair attempt is not the first. Another historian Moroccan Mohamed Ibn tetuaní Azuz the Hakim-Spanish surnames with 14 under his belt and whose family comes from the village of Cariatiz-Almeria in January 2002 wrote an open letter to King Juan Carlos, coinciding with the fifth anniversary of the decree Isabella expelled, in which he called for "the withdrawal of all edicts of expulsion and public recognition of old mistakes in the city of Granada and the king of Morocco."

In the letter, Azuz reproached the Spanish monarch his apology while Israeli President was reluctant to do the same with the descendants of the Moors: "In the capitulations of Granada is repeated up to ten times the formula to forever ensuring the rights of these andalusíes to remain on their land if they gave the ciudad.Y a decade later were expelled and persecuted by the Inquisición.Todos know, Your Majesty, the nefarious influence of these events on the Spanish-Moroccan relations during five centuries and still today, cause tension, suspicion and mistrust between the two countries. And, above, with the aggravating circumstance that the kings Isabel successors dealt only execute that clause is "waging war against the Moors in their own dollars." The King never got to read that letter, backed by historians as Ian Gibson and the Lebanese writer Amin Maaluf-and even suspended the visit was scheduled at that time to Tetuan.

SPANISH TOWN

It seems incredible to contemplate as Granada and Andalusian past lives on in the collective unconscious of these Moorish descendants now living in Morocco. Any of Spanish tourists who walk through the streets of Chefchaouen can sentirlo.La city was founded by a group of Moors arrived in Spain in the late fifteenth century and its resemblance to some villages in southern Andalusia is amazing. Alcazaba itself seems a tiny copy of the majestic Alhambra, there is a mosque called "the Andalusian" and its maze of streets is streaked Castilian names that evoke the grandeur of "Paradise Lost."

The Moorish families are easily identified because trendy and best business and maintain the prosperity that came 500 years ago. For a long time was holy city closed to foreigners, it only came to be ajusticiados.Los Spanish conquered it in 1920, after threatening to raze a cannon if not surrendered. The chronicles that when the soldiers were advancing, rifle in hand, inside the medina, its inhabitants greeted them from behind doors with phrases in Old Castilian, such as "God save you."

"Despite the expulsion our parents and grandparents never aleccionaron against the Spanish, but quite the opposite. We always said that a part of us was Spanish. My family, for example, were builders and even today we have maintained this tradition from generation to generation. They were the ones who brought the knowledge of masonry aquí.Nos Al Andalus speak Castilian taught since childhood and my mother, for example, made a very similar type of rice to the paella that her grandmother taught her. We live well here but anyway, change 25% of a business in Grenada for all mine, "he laughs Abdelghafar while teaching us some pictures he has painted on Federico García Lorca expose hoping someday in Granada.

DAUGHTER OF GRANADA

Tetouan is one of the towns where many of the descendants of al-Andalus. In fact, the city was re-founded by a group led by Captain Moorish Moorish Al-Mandari-native to the Grenadian people Piñar-after remained uninhabited for almost a century after it was destroyed by troops sent by Henry III of Castile, in 1399. Protected by its distance from the coast, about 10 kilometers and the safe haven of the Rif mountains behind, the Andalusians expelled found there a position close to their lost homeland, a place to "breathe the air of Spain" and The daughter called Granada.

"We currently estimate that at least 13% of its 700,000 inhabitants have Andalusian origin. And, according to a census of the early twentieth century, are located 821 Spanish surnames that still remain. Some of them like Torres, Aragon, Molina Large or belonging to important families of this city. We have collected 5000 proverbs popularly used in the city that are of Spanish origin. And here is a phenomenon almost unique in the world, thanks to Tetuan fate would be occupied by the Spanish-twice consecutively in 1860 and during the Protectorate (1912 to 1956) - prompting families cohabitasen Muslim, Christian and Jewish with the same surname and likely descended from the same ancestors, "says Daoud Hasna, curator of Tetuan Daoudia private library, where you store thousands of documents on the history of the Andalusians in the city.

Mostfa Rachid's family is one of them. Also historian, and officer of the Moroccan government religious affairs in the province of Tangier, his family lived between Guadix and Granada which pioneered the manufacture of tiles, imported custom then to North Africa. One of his ancestors was married to the founder of Tetuan and proudly shows us his home, Andalusian-style similar to any of those in the old town of Cordoba and Seville-full of photos of the Alhambra and the Albaicin Granada.

"I still remember my uncle crying when evoked what their grandparents told him of Granada. I think that generation itself would become. I also remember my father repeating sayings such walls have ears or what does not kill, fatten, to dinner and heard only in my student days in España.Yo Moroccan feel to the core though I know it is as if he had two mothers: one that gave me and other who adopted me. Something that really hurt was when I attended a festival that was held in Granada on the occasion of the fifth centenary of his capitulation. They had a big party and I was crazy because it was as if they took counsel drop them because that was a civil war, the first ethnic cleansing of the modern era, "says Rachid, who responds to the stereotype of Andalusian worship, rich and very attached to their traditions.

The contributions of Andalusian culture to Moroccan society are innumerable. "The Nasrid kingdom was the most advanced in the world at that time. And all that lost the Spanish kings with expulsion, he won here in Morocco to acogerlos.Eran refugees who arrived with money and ideas to promote a new company introduced irrigation, new forms of culture, incredible advancements in the field of medicine, construction techniques, recipes, gave the name to the flowers, laid their guns in the armies, founded libraries, brought Andalusian music ... Let's ask our monarch to support us in the same way as it does with amatzig culture (Berber) which is dominant in this part of the country, "says Ali Raisuni meanwhile.

But not only in this area of ​​Morocco is the Moorish influence. One of the three districts of Fez was the capital of the kingdom for nearly a millennium, is named after the Andalusian and the very capital, Rabat, not many know that his brilliance comes from the Moorish pirate activity originating pacense Village Hornachos. These hornacheros, as they came to be called, expelled in 1609 by the decree of Felipe III, established what has come to be called "the republic of Sale" getting live almost independently of the Sultan then thanks to the huge profits they got the sack of Spanish and Portuguese ships. In retaliation for the expulsion, allied with Dutch pilots for this privateering they called "maritime strength of Islamic Jihad."

Another epic was starring the original Moorish town of Almeria Cuevas Almanzora, Jaudar Baxa, who, in command of an army Andalus, entered the service of the Sultan of Marrakesh after their expulsion from the Peninsula and conquered the kingdom of black Dogon country-what today is from Mali to Niger River bend, including the name and country of Benin-installing Timbuktu their capital.They founded a new empire and a new race, that of the weapon, which survived until 1741 when it was destroyed by Europeans. Even a Moorish woman, born in Alcala de Henares, became the wife of the ruler of Morocco Maulái Zaidan, as written in 1648.

For all these facts, memory key Abdelghafar and the founder of these cities, poets still keep singing it for the "lost paradise" of Granada and the joy of being able to continue their traditions in this corner of Africa. One of them, the Lebanese Najib Abu Mulham, even wrote a wonderful poem about the Andalusian Tetouan and which reflects the change of situation where the refugee becomes prophet of the land that welcomed him, "Friend, I am the one guest that has become host visitors that has become resident, the stranger is already familiar more ... Dude, I am captive of Andalusian charm ... ".