800 Years of Wooden Crosses

The history books and monuments of Spain will tell you that the around the year 700 Muslims started to settle; mainly in the south Al-andaluz as it was called and as we know it now Andalusia. But what happened to them? Well you may come across statues, carvings, monuments of Santiago riding a horse with the heads of slain Muslims under the hooves. The Spanish  are contradictorily proud that it took 800 years to rid the country of the Muslims. But of course some of the best monuments in Toledo, Cordoba, and Granada are Muslim built.  Nowadays Toledo is know as the city of three cultures, Islamic, Jewish and Catholic as at one time they all lived this small ancient capital. Like all countries there has to be a dominate power and once the catholic lot got stuck in the Jews didn’t last long either.
So what you say, well until recently the catholic cross was to be found in all school classrooms, I have one in mine along with a picture of the King, By now I'm teaching in  the military academy in Toledo, apparently the law states that no other picture can be on the same wall as the King’s – I have a poster that reads ‘In the Monkey We Trust’ sarcasm is not often understood.

So to try and bring Spain in line with other European countries and the fact that in the 21st century not everyone is catholic and a wooden cross may offend especially vampires. Vox- pops were done in the street and the public approved and disapproved of the removal of the crosses. But one woman made me laugh I’ll paraphrase ‘I thinks it’s disgusting Spain has always been a catholic country’. This is just ignorance and tolerance doesn’t exist in Spain. For those of you that are wondering were the UK fits in with this, we told Rome to poke it around the same time Spain was kicking out the last Muslim. Henry VIII want to divorce one of his wives and the best way to do it was setting up the Church of England, so we have 500 years of development where other countries got weigh down by wooden crosses.