Excursion into Myth and Language

Well, I promised Debora Ferreira I would relate the story of the bat and, I shall. 

I could do so very briefly. Though simple in itself, it un-walls the cave on so many other issues of intriguing history and folklore in this part of Spain. 

Simply, the bat, called in Valenciano, the rat penat or flying mouse, is on its crest prominently.  It stands over other significant symbols of Valencian identity.  Why?

Well, here we go. 

The city of Valencia, a prominent port of the Mediterranean located in marshes on the mouth of the … river., once was a Moorish city. Mosquitos were a terrible problem as one might imagine, perhaps even worse than the pesky Christians that would attack from time to time. 

It is said that the moors relied on bats to control mosquitos, though I do not know about Christians. 

Nonetheless, one time, when the King of Aragon, Jaume I invaded and was outside the city waiting to stage his attack, a bat flew into his camp. It made a big noise by striking the armaments and then flapping its wings on a drum. It sounded the alarm that the Moors were about to stealthfully attack Jaume’s forces. 

As a result of the bat’s sounding the war drums, the Christians were ready and able to fend of the soldiers of Valencia.  As a result, the Christians took over the city and region.

Ever since, they say, the rat penat has been considered a defender of the city; the bat saved it from ongoing Moorish occupation and the Christians from almost certain defeat. 

Curiously, the bat is somewhat similar to the dragon though a mammal rather than a reptile that occupies and important place in Aragon’s history. There they relate that St. George, yes  that St. George, managed to appear in Aragon and defeat the dragon who had been terrorizing the region, demanding a daily human sacrifice to assuage his attacks. The king had promised his daughter to whoever could take out the dragon.

What is it with these kings always wanting to give away their daughters? The King in Alicante was said to do the same thing, though for water rather than to defeat a dragon. 

So anyway. St. George killed the dragon as he did all over Europe. The dude really got around.  He left his image and his red bars on the coat of arms of Aragon.

Though part of Valencia as a Spanish region and though the second city of Valencia in terms of population, Alicante does not ostentate the bat in its heraldry. Instead it has the three red bars of Aragon in recognition of St George.

Jaume did conquer Alicante too, it is said, but his son-in law, King Alfonso the Wise of Castille redid the task.

In these dynastic struggles with the Arabs, and the effort by historians to say whose…”dragon”… is bigger or mightie—as in the flying mouse.

In short, or in tall, if you prefer, these conquests are origin stories for the cultural and linguistic diversity of Valencia and Alicante.  They are also contested but we shall not go there.

Both Valencia and Alicanjte have the language Valenciano, a close relative of Barcelona’s Catalan—Jaume sponsored literature in Catalan and was said to have spoken the tongue as well as, Aragonese, a different language now on the verge of extinction. (kings and noblemen are strangely multilingual).

While Catalan stems from the same family as French—this story helps explain why King Jaume did not go to war against the French—Aragonese is fromn the same family as Castillian.

Now called Churro (like the Iberian-descendent sheep of New Mexico), the Spanish of the western mountains of Valencia is heavily influenced by it if not being in fact its daughter with a more modern Castillian influence. 

The lowlands of Valencia are said to speak a language related to Catalan and the highlands a language related to that of Aragon, due to the fact that Jaume was the head of both provinces. He is said to hav brought colonists from both to “resettle” the lands taken from the Moors. 

However, In Alicante, the issue is more complex.  The north is like Valencia with Valenciano in the East and Castillian—now like Alfonso’s Manchego in the west. 

To the south, the City of Elce (Elx) is officially Valenciano speaking as are highland areas, while the broad southen Vinalopó valley is Spanish speaking. There the Spanish is more like Murcian.

Alicante was near the boundary established between the vassal kingdom of Alphonso, Murcia, and Catalonia. 

Thus in the city you hear Spanishes similar to Murcian in pronunciation if not in all the Murcian words,  and some similar to Manchego. You can also hear Valenciano, as well as their own Spanish of their bilingual life. 

I have now finished my wonderful dim sum from a cool local Chinese place near the sea, and will go back into my bat-world of poetry and strange ideas, like that of dappled sunlight and shadow from the Japanese Komorebi. Later…

Good Times while the Bad Times Roll On

On this chilly gray Alicante day, Carnaval Saturday, when directions are easily confused, I see a woman across the street walking her two beagles.

She is the very image of normality. Even her dogs, usually rambunctious, seem calm, as if the reduced light has softened their energy.

Yet my screen is filled with the after effects of the White House bullying of Ukraine. Both the US President and Vice President are shameful and should not lift up their heads in polite company.

I shall not jump even more aggressively on to the pile castigating them, nor much less support these wannabe vipers and real life bullies.

Instead, I shall relate a question from the server at a small and charming cafe where I had breakfast.

After telling me she chose soft jazz to set the tone for what might become a raucous day, she wondered if carnaval would even take place this late afternoon due to the forecast of rain.

I do not know about Alicante, but in Peru and Bolivia, water is very much part of Carnaval. Youths roam with water balloons, buckets, and water uzis in hand. They soak the unsuspecting or those who would get them first.

Cans of foam have replaced some of this but water is still a major symbol in this festival of fertility.

Spring is shortly to come in Spain, despite today’s cold. In some ways, Carnaval is about the bacchanalian confusion of a warming earth readying to open and throw up sprouts.

(In the Andes it is about high summer and the need for water for the crops to ripen, all the while the earth prepares to close down for winter’s cold and wind).

The costumes and movement take place here tonight, on the Rambla—a former gully now canalized and covered with the former stones of the city’s walls. The street then goes around one edge of the hill Benalcantil where the Moorish and Christian town remains, and where the castle of Santa Barbara (she of lightning) still stands. At its end, the street now opens onto the Esplanade, the tiled, Pedestrian avenue along the sea’s edge.

Furthermore, the Rambla starts at the city’s public market where a road named for the Castilian King Alfonso X, el Sabio who took the city from the moors, meets a road that continues to the other side of Benalcantil.

It is named for the King of Aragon, Jaume II who removed Alicante from the Castilians in favor of the Catalan and Aragonés speaking peoples who, joined by the Murcians with their own language and the more highland Castilians form the bulk of the provinces population. They give it linguistic complexity.

One should not forget the often ignored Moors. They did not pass simply into history. Many left, some converted, and over the centuries since, many others have come in the back and forth between Alicante and North Africa.

Many people will spend today inside with their families. Yet, it is fitting that others fill the Rambla—that Avenue into the past and the present—in masks and costumes.

After all, on Monday Lent begins and I wish the threatening war on Europe’s edge and the political destruction in the US capital were as easily finalized and contained in words as this Feast.