Paper short abstract:

Two southern villages of Spain and Portugal share a relevant Islamic heritage and took it as a common resource for regional projects and claims. National borders are defied and/or reinvented by different agents that cooperate in this process, to pursue their own political and/or religious claims.

Paper long abstract:

Mértola and Almonaster la Real, two villages respectively located in the South of Portugal and Spain, each one on its side of the border, share an important Islamic past and heritage. Taking advantage of it, both villages decided to engage on development projects grounded on its promotion, display and commodization. In 1990, Almonaster la Real hold its first Islamic festival, organizing academic and leisure activities to attract tourism to the village and surrounding areas. Later on, and inspired by its neighbour, Mértola developed a similar idea. These projects and twined festivalization of a common past and its display, built and enacted alternative maps that blurred the national borders, while sustaining southern islamophilia. Meanwhile, past and present also merge, specially through the participation of the members of a Muslim Spanish community, who since early participate in the organization of both events, performing their Andalusian Islamic religiosity to visitors. In this paper we will try to analyse how current narratives try to break an historical border through the enactment of a time and space where/ and when it didn't exist, and how different participants and agents cooperating in this process, use the arena to legitimize their own political and/or religious claims.