Moros y Cristianos

We started traveling towards the south of Spain and reached a small village called Elda very close to Alicante. We were joined by a bunch of Anton’s friends (from his Bachelor’s degree, most of them, he was meeting them after 10 years) Hmm! That was a big emotional moment. In the evening we were taken to a very strange old building, which looked more like a personalized bar cum discotheque. With very less people speaking English, I was silently witnessing the amount of food, drink, emotions shared between people. Suddenly I got a very interesting English speaking person, who started describing about the “ history of the place (the personal bar cum discotheque), they refer to this place as “cuartelillo” (the diminutive for the word "cuartel", meaning "headquarters"). Usually, a group of friends together buy themselves an old house and call it “cuartelillo”, and it’s just used for partying and specially for this big “Alicante festival” called Moros y Cristianos . People celebrate this festival by the first weekend of June, to mark the fights between the Muslims and Christians, which were frequent between 10^th and 15^th century, it seems. Each family inherits the role of either Moros or Cristianos, and they dress up accordingly and go in parade with fireworks. Seeing the photos of this festival hanged in the “cuartelillo “, my childhood image of Spain as a country full of colors, dance, festivals, music and fun came into reality. I saw this collection for Moros y Cristianos photos in the internet, check it out!