Photos of the Battle of Lepanto

Yup, it’s silly.

The original battle involved something like 80,000 men, which is almost the population of the whole island. So I was expecting a cut-down version. Heck, Shakespeare did battles by having one man come on stage and say, “Imagine the battle…”

So Barlovento had a rather good toy castle with about 12 visible defenders, and the sultan gave a speech about the original battle. Then a ship came up behind the castle. At this point I realised that I was in the wrong position to see the naval battle, but I got to see the sails of the two ships waving over the tree tops.

They had lots of dramatic bangs which threw dust up into the air – I think they must have buried explosives in advance.

Eventually, of course, they Christians won, and took all the Muslims prisoner.

They had a brief pause to wash the dirt out of their mouths, so I went around the back.

At that point, I finally got a good look at the Christian ship.

Then the victors marched their prisoners into the village.

(I’m sure it’s against the Geneva Convention to force a prisoner along with a pike when he’s already got a sword stuck through him.)

They took the prisoners to the church, where, surprise, surprise, they all converted to Christianity – politically correct NOT! But then I’m sure that somewhere there’s an equivalent Muslim fiesta which ends with all the Christians converting to Islam.

Altogether, a rather good laugh.

Of course the fiesta carried on with music in the plaza and dancing long into the night, but I went home.

Posted by sheila

Sheila came to La Palma with a six month contract and has stayed 24 years so far. She used to work as a software engineer at the observatory, but now she's a writer and Starlight guide.