Jérez, Arcos, Morón, Vejer, Chiclana and Conil are a number of Andalucian towns which end in ‘…de la frontera’ but there’s no frontier in sight.
However, the place names make perfect sense when you go back to the time of the Muslim Moors (Arabs). Al-Ándalus, was under Moorish control on the Iberian peninsular for more than 700 years. At one point their kingdom stretched as far north as Pamplona in Spain and Carcasonne in France.
In 711 CE, a group of North African Muslims captured the Iberian Peninsula (modern Spain and Portugal). Known as al-Andalus, the territory became a prosperous cultural and economic center where education and the arts and sciences flourished.
In the 13th and 14th centuries the strength of the Muslim state diminished, creating inroads for Christians who resented Moorish rule. This culminated in 1492, when Catholic monarchs Ferdinand II and Isabella I won the Granada War and completed Spain’s conquest of the Iberian Peninsula. Eventually, the Moors were expelled from Spain. The North African colonists had been in control of almost all of Spain for 750 years until Granada fell in 1492, (the same year as Spain discovered the Americas).
During the later 15th century, there were a number of frontier towns which watched over Terra Nullius, the unclaimed space between the two factions, the European border between Christianity and Islam. It became a place of exchange and barter, keeping alive the spirit of the Christian crusade and the Islamic jihad.
While another culture might have dropped the Arabic names, the Spanish kept them. Words beginning with ’Al’ come from the Arab prefix ‘the’: Alhambra, Almería, Alpujarra…
Of all of the ‘frontera’ towns, mostly located in the province of Cádiz, the largest is Jerez de la Frontera with its magnificent Alcazar, an 11th-century Moorish fortress. Other towns with a de la Frontera suffix are Arcos, Chiclana, Conil and Vejer, a vertiginous white village commanding views to the Atlantic.
We are heading inland to Arcos de la Frontera soon …