Spain’s medieval ‘Moors and Christians’ festival draws scrutiny as Muslim residents remain sidelined

ALCOY, Spain (MNTV) — Each April, this city of 62,000 in south-east Spain stages one of the country’s most spectacular cultural events: three days of mock battles, blunderbuss fire, and elaborate costumes re-enacting the Christian conquest of Muslim-ruled Iberia. The Moros y Cristianos festival is Alcoy’s defining tradition, drawing participants who spend thousands on period dress and crowds that pack the streets.

But as Hyphen reports from this year’s edition, the community whose history sits at the heart of the performance is almost entirely absent from it.

Roughly 12 per cent of Alcoy’s population was born abroad, with Moroccans the single largest group. Many have been settled in the city for years. 

Yet Muslim participation in the festival remains negligible — a gap that organisers attribute to choice but that residents say is shaped by structures that are extremely difficult to enter from the outside.

The event is managed through filàs, long-established social clubs where membership is typically inherited, passed between generations of the same families, and governed by lengthy waiting lists. There is no written rule excluding Muslims, but the practical effect is that newcomers — and particularly immigrant communities — find the door effectively closed.

Festival president Francisco García told Hyphen that all residents were welcome and that the event was a historical commemoration rather than a religious one. One participant suggested Muslim residents simply preferred not to get involved. But several Muslim residents told Hyphen a different story: they wanted to take part but found no realistic pathway in.

Reactions within the Muslim community ranged widely. An 18-year-old woman of Moroccan heritage said the festival held no meaning for her and that Muslims were not invited. 

A 23-year-old who arrived from Morocco three years ago said she found it fun and would happily join. Hassana Bichiri, 48, who has lived in Spain for nearly 30 years, took a more layered view — he had no objection to the festival in principle but believed some groups had co-opted it for racist purposes.

Bichiri also criticised the practice of some participants wearing blackface-style makeup when portraying Muslim characters, calling it ugly and open to exploitation. Organisers defended the costumes as historically faithful. A spokesperson for the Spanish Union of Islamic Communities offered a more relaxed assessment, saying it was unproblematic unless people were offended. Other elements have been quietly adjusted — a church statue depicting Saint George killing Moors is now covered with flowers during the celebrations, a change organisers said was precautionary rather than prompted by complaints.

The festival’s symbolism has acquired a harder political edge in recent years. Spain’s far-right Vox party has repeatedly drawn on the imagery of the Reconquista in its campaign messaging, presenting the medieval Christian conquest as a metaphor for resistance to immigration and Islam. 

Vox figures attended this year’s festival alongside mainstream politicians, though organisers insisted the event itself was non-political.

Historian Jorge Linares told Hyphen that the pageant in its modern form dates largely to the nineteenth century and should be read as a recreation of the past, not a statement about the present.

Whether that framing holds depends on who you ask. For lifelong residents steeped in the tradition, it is a source of civic pride with deep local roots. For Muslim residents watching a dramatisation of their ancestors’ defeat from the sidelines of a city they now call home, the line between heritage and exclusion is considerably less clear.