Moros Marinos

Born in 1865 with the idea of opposing a Saracen fleet to the Christian one in naval combat in the waters of the Clariano River, they manned a new frigate, called Almanzor, in memory of the fearsome and victorious warrior Muhammad Ibn Abi Amir, known as al-Mansur, "The Victorious". Possibly acquired with funds contributed by members of the Board of Directors of Fiestas, the Casino "El Porvenir" or members of the frigate itself.

Their participation was relegated to the following year due to cholera. The new batch, under the name of Moros Marinos, forged at the headquarters of the Casino of “El Porvenir”, came to enlarge the Saracen hosts with a “Turkish” attire and carrying polished wooden paddles. It was made up of relevant people, of high economic power, members and sympathizers of the conservative party, whose relationship remains hidden between the seams of our history.

For a little over a century and a half, they have triumphantly paraded through the streets and squares at the reveille and at the beginning of the pasodobles and Moorish marches and at the beginning of the military marches; at the sacrifice of the mass and in the procession, they have filled the rite that has led to Ontinyent becoming Christian and Moorish since 1860.

Over the course of many years, accompanied by music, they showed the beauty of their disappeared dance, recorded in the press throughout the 19th and part of the 20th centuries, and in a unique way at the Regional Exhibition of Valencia (1909). Just like the much-missed “Nit del Riu”, gifted with joy and entertainment, in which the frigate “Almanzor” took centre stage, together with the Christian “Méndez Núñez”, decorated and illuminated in the Venetian style and pulled by mules, sailing on the waters of the Clariano River to make their own the historical scenes linked to the sea, recalling times gone by when people came to defend our coasts from the attacks of Berber and Tunisian pirates.

Sailing the seas of the festival, the Moorish sailors have guided the Saracen hosts on countless occasions, they carry and guard the flag with the crescent moon and recite the grandiloquent verses of the embassy from the deck of the frigate, where old and new generations of Moorish sailors hoist on its bow all their desires and illusions between days captivated by a town and its people.