Valencia: what lies beneath

It’s past midnight, and I’m in a street surrounded by a group of people chatting and laughing as the sharp smell of gunpowder from crackling fireworks wafts over us in the thick night air. A colourfully dressed woman with dark brown eyes is wandering in and out of the crowd holding a plate of delicious nut-based sweetmeats, which she offers around.

“I made them,” she says proudly.

All at once, the hubbub of guttural voices dies down as the sound of a beating drum reverberates from the pavement opposite.

Tak takka tak!

And a man nearby starts playing a high-pitched reed instrument, like a snake-charmer, with slow, whining notes. After a few moments, a woman at his side begins to sing. But this is no sweet melody; it sounds more like a chant or a cry, her voice rising and falling in strange, swooping intervals, almost like a muezzin’s call to prayer. When she finishes, everyone cheers and claps, the drum beats again, and the crowd moves on down the street for more music and sweetmeats.

Though the music, food and atmosphere might make me feel as though I’ve been transported to North Africa for a street festival, I am actually in Valencia, on Spain’s eastern coast, a city that has been my home for the past 10 years. The sweetmeats – indistinguishable from halva – are known as turrón, and I’m witnessing a Nit d’Albaes – a common local fiesta where satirical songs are sung late into the night – but with an obvious Moorish flavour to them.

Valencia is not the first place you tend to think of when Moorish Spain is mentioned. Andalusia, to the south, has that honour, with its magnificent Alhambra Palace in Granada, the Great Mosque at Cordoba, and other picturesque sites. But historically, Valencia is as Moorish as any of these: it was ruled by Muslims for more than 500 years, until 1238, while the very last Moors in Spain, the Moriscos, were concentrated in the Valencia region when the order to expel all 300,000 of them to North Africa came in 1609. Under the Arabs, Valencia was at the centre of what was known as sharq al-andalus – the eastern region of Al-Andalus, while the city itself was known as hadiqat al-andalus – the garden of Moorish Spain, for its wonderful climate and extremely fertile soil.

Despite this heritage, however, you won’t find many mosques or ancient palaces to visit. Yet, although the region may be a less obvious tourist destination than its Andalusian counterpart, it is no less rewarding for it.

Today the city is the third-largest in Spain, a thriving Mediterranean seaport which recently hosted the America’s Cup and has staged two Formula One Grands Prix. From being an oft-overlooked corner of the country, it has arrived as a tourist destination in the past few years with the opening of the spectacularly modern City of Arts and Sciences – a space-age architectural delight comprising an opera house, museums, an aquarium and more – designed by local boy Santiago Calatrava.

Source: The National, Valencia: what lies beneath