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Cuento y leyenda de El Borge

Diputación de Málaga
Portada Guía de cuentos y leyendas de la Axarquía.ESP

Cuento y leyenda de El Borge

Zip Code 29718
Chronicles and Legends (si se trata de historia)

Its name comes from the Arabic “al-burch” meaning tower or bastion.

  • Name of its inhabitants:

Borgenos.

  • Famous Personalities:

Martîn Vázquez Ciruela, one of the most illustrious theologians of the XVII century.

Luis Muñoz Garcîa, was better known as El Bizco del Borge, who was a famous bandit renowned for being blood-thirsty and heartless, capable of extreme cruelty, and one of the most ferocious bandits ever according to the Guardia Civil. He was born in 1.837 and died in Cortijo Grande de Lucena (Córdoba) at the hands of the Guardia Civil in 1889.

  • Legend:

The legend repeats itself and there is a story in El Borge of how the people from a neighboring town decided to take the statue of the patron saint, Saint Gabriel. The men charged with the mission reached the church and, under the cover of night, they went in and tried to steal the statue; they were unable to do this as the statue of the saint became so heavy that they were unable to move it from its pedestal. Frustrated, they had to leave the town in the knowledge that there was little they could do against it while it counted with the protection of the Holy Archangel.

Another legend refers to the name of the mountain Saint Pitar which is in the jurisdiction of Málaga, but borders with El Borge. Apparently there lived on its summit a Muslim saint who summoned the faithful to prayer every day using a large shell; when people heard him they would shout: “the saint is whistling”. This legends has a more historical basis, since the name of the mountain, according to several studies, is the Arabic form of the Mozarabic form Sanctu Petru (Saint Peter), which then became Santo Pitar.

A tradition now in disuse, for obvious reasons, is the way lads and lasses would declare their love to each other in order to formalize their relations, both in El Borge and in Cútar. This would take place in El Borge on Easter Sunday and on Christmas Day in Cútar, where the same tradition was followed. The idea was that the lads who wanted to ask for the hand of a girl in marriage would wait at the door of the church at the end of mass. The young girls of marriageable age came out with their mothers or aunts, one by one, and when a lad saw the girl he liked he would go up and, without a word, a warning shot was fired a meter from her feet and then he left immediately. That night he would go to his beloved’s house and if next to the table there were two empty chairs side by side, this meant that the family approved of the betrothal; in this case the lad and the girl would sit at the table and the relationship was official. If the lad did not see the aforementioned chairs, then it meant the family did not approve. What a disappointment!.

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Discover more about the province of Malaga

Discover more about the province of Malaga