An epic tour through Spain’s beautiful – and brutal – past witnessing the annual Moors & Christians Festival (which celebrates the country's end of Muslim occupation)

Every April, the mountain town of Alcoy near Valencia welcomes an army of Islamic knights. They wear round Moorish helmets and shining breastplates, brandish muskets and scimitars, and ride gorgeously accoutred Arabian horses.

They fire their weapons and advance on the Christian army, also in armour and waving swords. The streets thunder with cannonades and fusillades, the cries of fighting men and the clash of steel, while the air is filled with gunpowder smoke.

This annual festival marks the brutal clash of Christians and Moors fought in 1276 during ‘la Reconquista’ – the taking back of Spain from its Muslim occupiers.

Every April, the mountain town of Alcoy near Valencia welcomes an army of Islamic knights. They wear round Moorish helmets and shining breastplates, brandish muskets and scimitars, and ride gorgeously accoutred Arabian horses.

The grand beauty of its imperial mosque (now a bizarre but magnificent hybrid cathedral-mosque) is Simon's favourite place in Spain 

One of the fascinating things about Spain is that it is the only country in Western Europe that was once part of an Islamic caliphate, and the only place where the war between Christianity and Islam was fought to a conclusion when Ferdinand and Isabella (‘Los Reyes Catolicos’) finally conquered Granada, the last Islamic emirate in Spain, in 1492.

It is this extraordinary story that I wanted to tell in my BBC series about Spain, a country which has effectively marked the borderland between Europe and Africa, between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, between the Old World and the New, the frontline between Christendom and Islam. Nowhere else has known such ethnic diversity, nor such a clash of faiths.

When I visited Alcoy I stayed high above the town in the beautiful Masia la Mota boutique hotel. I sat on the veranda and imagined times past as I heard the boom of cannons from the fiesta-battle below.

If you’re interested in the story of Spain, start with Hannibal, the warrior who famously crossed the Alps to attack Rome with his elephants. Spain was the beginning and the end of the great struggle for power between Carthage – that city in present-day Tunisia – and Rome. 

Spain was Hannibal’s family fiefdom and the port Cadiz one of his main bases. Happily, today Cadiz has one of Spain’s best paradors – state-owned hotels, often in old palaces. 

Spain was Hannibal’s family fiefdom and the port Cadiz one of his main bases. Happily, today Cadiz has one of Spain’s best paradors – state-owned hotels, often in old palaces. Pictured is the mesmirising Alhambra palace

This example is thoroughly modern with extremely comfortable rooms offering amazing views of the Atlantic. It also serves the best fresh tuna steak in the West.

Around 218, Hannibal gathered his army and elephants in Cadiz and set off across France and the Alps to attack Rome. But he failed; in the end the Roman general Scipio took the war back to Spain, landing not far from Seville. The city was my next stop.

In the evenings one of my great pleasures was sitting outside my hotel, the Gran Melia Colon, with a glass of wine, people-watching.

Within a few decades, the Roman Empire – and Spain – were Christian. But Rome and then Spain itself fell to a wave of migrants, starting with the Goths who created the first Spanish Christian kingdom. But not for long.

The wounds of this awful period are not quite healed even in today’s democracy. Spain remains that crucible of faiths and empires, blood and gold, death and glory

It all started, by legend, with the naked girl. When King Roderic, the Visigothic king of Spain, saw the nude daughter of Count Julian frolicking in the waves, he ravished her. 

Julian was so outraged that he appealed for help across the Straits of Gibraltar to the Muslim empire.

In 711, the Arab governor of Tangier crossed to Spain: his name was Tariq and he landed in what his men called Jabal al Tariq – modern-day Gibraltar – and conquered Spain. There is not a trace of that Arab influence in Gib now – except the story that its apes were brought by the Arabs.

I stayed at the modern Caleta hotel, where guests are advised to close the windows at night as the apes climb the hotel’s facade and frolic on the balconies.

Simon stayed at the modern Caleta hotel, where guests are advised to close the windows at night as the apes climb the hotel’s facade and frolic on the balconies

The Arabs created a rich, powerful kingdom in Spain that thrived so much that they declared a caliphate, with its capital in Cordoba. 

The grand beauty of its imperial mosque (now a bizarre but magnificent hybrid cathedral-mosque) is my favourite place in Spain.

When the caliphate started to fall apart, the Christian kings began their Reconquista – until the emirs called for help from Morocco. 

This attracted a series of fundamentalist jihadi armies, led by charismatic Islamic preachers, who indulged in a frenzy of brutal killing (like Islamic State today) and held Spain for its Arab rulers.

They delayed the Reconquista for three centuries but Islamic power waned until only one emirate remained – Granada – ruled from its palace of the Alhambra. Amazingly, for my series, we got to film alone in the mountain citadel, the most gorgeous of Islamic buildings.

Ferdinand and Isabella later conquered Granada, but they also had darker plans – they expelled all the Jews from Spain. By the time they died, their empire was ascendant and Spanish conquistadors were soon conquering South America. 

Their Habsburg grandson Charles V was Holy Roman Emperor, ruler of Spain, America, much of Germany and Italy and Holland. Charles spent his honeymoon in Granada – the occasion was obviously a happy one because he built his unique circular palace beside the Alhambra.

By this time Spain needed a capital: I drove north to Madrid where Charles’s son Philip II, who became the greatest king on earth, settled.

The festival tells the story of how the Moors were defeated by the Christians, ending approximately 800 years of Moorish rule in Spain – from the 7th century until the 15th century

To experience Madrid old and new, I first stayed in the minimalist Hotel Urso, before moving to the classic Hotel Ritz. I never wanted to leave – it was full of old-fashioned eccentricity, its waiters and doormen dressed in gold braid uniforms and wigs.

Surely there is nothing more charming than to sit in its famous garden, an oasis of calm amid the boiling city, and eat a perfect gazpacho. There is no better base in Madrid – it is one of the greatest hotels in the world.

Following Philip’s death the empire went into decline, not helped by the Habsburg’s insane habit of intermarriage so that the last of their line, Carlos II, turned out to be impotent. 

The ineptness of his Bourbon successors provoked Napoleon to invade Spain until he was defeated by the Spanish people with a little help from the Duke of Wellington.

For a century Spain was falling apart, until finally, in 1936, General Franco launched a coup against the new socialistic republic. Hitler and Mussolini rushed to help him while Stalin opposed them. 

But the brutal Franco won and he reigned as an implacable dictator until 1975. King Juan Carlos facilitated Spain’s transformation to democracy.

The wounds of this awful period are not quite healed even in today’s democracy. Spain remains that crucible of faiths and empires, blood and gold, death and glory.

Blood And Gold: The Making Of Spain, with Simon Sebag Montefiore, begins on BBC Four on Tuesday at 9pm.