ABSTRACT
The historical antagonism between the two groups and the term moro are both revisited in annual mock fights between Christians and Muslims, in the Fiestas de Moros y Cristianos. The festival of Moors and Christians is at the core of annual patron saint celebrations in hundreds of villages and towns in Valencia, and to a lesser extent in other Spanish regions. The festival is certainly about Muslims and Christians, although the complexities of the historical background of Muslim-Christian relationships in Spain are reduced to a few motifs in what has been called frontier Orientalism. The reclamation was the ritual climax of the festival of Moors and Christians as well as of the entire patron saint festival. During the Second Republic and the Civil War the Moors and Christians was not performed either, although it was revitalized in 1940. During the sixteenth century, the age of large-scale Christian-Muslim confrontations, the festival of Moors and Christians was highly elaborated and widely diffused.
