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Each year the proud and loud Moors and Christians parade from top to bottom of Mojácar pueblo. Then… they vanish for another year. These warriors in fact live in a peaceful co-existence in a secret network of tunnels and caves under the pueblo.
This troglodyte town originated with the 1521 repairs to Mojácar’s fortifications, which had been damaged by the fierce earthquake that that had ravaged the area. The terrible noise of stone breaking, hammering, sudden structural collapse, and the non-stop yelling at the beasts of burden (rather like the noise that goes on these days in Mojácar menos Cilla Black and Eminem), was ideal cover for the tunnelling of the Moors and Christians, who had decided to move underground to avoid the rule-makers, tax men, planners and especially the man who collected fines from the town hall. It is said that many experienced miners from Bédar and El Pinar were happily trotting down from their remote habitations in the hills to join the new troglodytes, and work proceeded quickly downwards.
A central core was retained and reinforced with masonry, in addition to giving a sturdy structural spine to the diggings, the cave also contained a sophisticated air-circulation system, until recently powered by tethered falcons in small hillside crevices.
The living quarters are on the top level over the workshops, where for the last 450 years a bewildering collection of jarapas, replica coins, ashtrays of every shape and style, together with plaster plaques and cheap jewellery, have been manufactured and smuggled to the surface.
The rock being relatively soft and veined meant the tunnels and caverns were excavated in a random and eccentric pattern, but they often end in a hillside cave, where false walls, moved on rails by elaborate machinery driven by rather tubby, pampered donkeys, are opened on quiet nights to give the falcons a rest from their ventilation chores.
Under the workshops is the kitchen and garden level. The diet is mostly quiche and tortilla provided by cooks who pluck the mushrooms and potatoes from the walls and ceiling as required, with a plenteous supply of eggs – not exactly free range – but you can’t have everything! Poultry underground? Have you never been wandering home from a fiesta in the early hours, heard cocks crowing, hens clucking, but never one to be seen?!
The diet nowadays includes fish, as around 200 years ago a tunnel was completed to the sea, under the private tributary of the Fuente, where the water is hauled up to the kitchens, workshops and living quarters. |
