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All the cities, towns and places in Spain have their stories and legends. Some are well known and others are not. History is the account of the events that have taken place over time and that have their origins in wars, in ancestral or modern struggles, from the founding of the towns to the present day or the
construction of monumental buildings, whether profane or religious, and of artistic achievements that have their details that are contemplated and analysed. When these stories disappear due to the action of time, the legend arises, which are the same facts augmented by popular fantasy or sublimated by religious faith.
A legend is a traditional, admiring and generally fantastic account of particular people, times and places. It is the flower of a people’s admiration, it is the delicate expression of popular literature. The people in the legend want to escape from the vulgar, everyday, embellishing the prosaic with a marked spirituality. The legend keeps the essence of a people, the finest of its spirit and the most delicate of its emotion. Old legends are intimate lessons of a bygone time and its reminiscences, simple, endearing and believing. The legends are a misty memory of a distant and sometimes glorious past of the secular life of a people.
There is no written evidence of the patronage of the Virgen de las Angustias over Alanís. It has not been possible to determine its chronology. Nor can the architectural style of the chapel be used to determine the date on which the fight between Moors and Christians took place at the site known as “matamoros”, which may have been at a date well before the chapel and image were built. This fact and the patronage of the Virgen de las Angustias in this village resulted in the aforementioned fight, as stated elsewhere, when the Christian captain sought the protection of the Virgin in a personal fight with the Moorish leader whom he managed to defeat, and to commemorate the event he ordered the chapel to be built and the village took the Virgen de las Angustias as its patron saint.
Previously the Patron Saint of Alanís was San Juan Bautista, whose reminiscence has survived to the present day with the worship that took place in the hermitage of San Juan, called “la velá de San Juan”.
For more information visit the website of the Hdad. de las Angustias at https://angustiasdealanis.com/
It was the 24th of June of an uncertain year, the day of San Juan, Patron Saint of Alanís. The setting sun gilded the peaks of the mountains that surround this village. In the hermitage of San Juan, situated next to the castle, there was a great feast, where that afternoon most of the inhabitants of Alanís had gathered.
At that time there were several Muslim families living in Alanís who had received the waters of baptism, but who continued to practise the rites of their religion. Among these Muslims was a young Moorish girl called Ascia. She was of singular beauty. She had secret relations with a young man, son of the castle’s governor, who, in love with the beautiful Saracen, wanted to free her from the harem. That feast day, taking advantage of the tumult, he had arranged an interview with Ana María, which was the name taken by the Saracen, at the fountain of Las Pilitas, a place close to the castle, to reveal to the Christian that her father had decided to marry her to an Arab, as is the custom and custom of this religion.
The setting of the rendezvous is mysterious, picturesque and beautiful, and suitable for the expansion of the idyll, and there she told the Christian of her fears.
The Moorish woman’s father, who had been told of the meeting, informed his daughter’s future husband, whose name was Ali the African, and the latter ran full of rage to the place of the rendezvous, and while they were engaged in a vow of eternal love, the fierce Moor stabbed the young Christian in the back with his cutlass, leaving him lifeless. Ascia, maddened by the scene and by the Saracen’s fury, ran in terror, screaming, and the echo of her screams and her vision disappeared over the heights of the alameda, like a fleeting gyre of moonlight. The Moorish man ravaged the inert body of the unsuspecting Christian and when he tried to look for the beautiful Ascia Halema, she had disappeared from the surroundings. Warned, relatives and friends searched the grove and the depths of the stream to no avail. All to no avail, the beautiful Ascia had disappeared forever.
In successive years, whenever the 24th of June arrived, at midnight, the curious returning from the fiesta would find the beautiful vision of Ana María seated at the edge of the fountain, and when they wanted to approach her, the vision would disappear just as it had on the night of the drama.
Such is the story and the oral tradition passed down through the years, with all its poetry and mystery. It is yet another episode of love between these two religions which, although they have many points of contact, are opposed to each other because of the difference in their religions.
This legend is nowadays very fragmented and has almost disappeared. The tradition has remained as a local legend with the name of “El encanto de las Pilitas”.
Alanís in History and in Legend, Carlos Lora
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