No myths, no ornaments – Originally Published: Sligo, December 2022

Below is an annotated and sourced transcript of Our Last Day at the Centre of the World in PDF format. For additional notes on the film, skip to ‘Notes’ in the text below. 

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Another year. It seems like yesterday that I finished up editing Searching for Tartessos. I kept referring to that project as an ‘experiment’, a tentative first step into making lengthier and more substantial videos on topics I found interesting and relevant, even if it is quite literally ancient history. But it wasn’t yesterday, it was a whole year ago; a year full of learning and unexpected experiences both good and bad. And if Tartessos was an experiment, Our Last Day is an exploration. Throughout its making, this project has been gradually revealing to me how much I need to level up and improve, where the limitations are to what one person with a camera can realistically hope to achieve, and in the process, inject me with new motivation to overcome the mental obstacles and narrowness of mind that imprison the vision in the brain leaving only confusion and, at best, hints of best intent on the screen. Sorry if that sounds a bit presumptuous. I find it difficult to convey the frustration I feel at the disparity between what I imagine the outcome of something to be, and what it actually turns out being, be it a video, a piece of writing or music, or even just dinner. Just ask Marina about the time I over-salted the risotto and the week of midnight walks and soul-searching that followed. All this to say that whilst I am cursed with perpetual dissatisfaction with my work, I value the subsequent drive to improve that this leaves me with. I hate self-congratulation, and equally self-depreciation, so I’ll stop here before this becomes just that.  

It’s a hard thing to show your work to the world, with all your mistakes and shortcomings. You want to tear the page from the typewriter in despair and crumple it into an embarrassed ball. You know the audience stop at the paper, they neither see nor care about the journey every single letter has taken from idea to ink. But that said, it’s been a great liberation to me having finally overcome that impulse to tear the paper, and instead stick it to the wall of that great virtual forum of the world we call the internet, submitting it to the scrutiny and mercy of countless faceless opinions. There, the work has to either sink or swim on its own, your explanations are irrelevant. But so too are the criticisms and the complements. Nobody knows your work better than you; it’s the amalgamation of weeks, months, or years of passion, struggle, and determination. No amount of a stranger’s genuine praise can come close to the intimate joy you have already derived from the process of creating. And no amount of faceless derision can match the draining ordeal you have already put both the work and your own self through. So if the work sinks, so be it. If it swims, so be it. You have already sailed on, your eyes set on the next unexplored island, and more determined and equipped than you were before because it is you, and only you, who sets the bar. And the only person who have to answer to is yourself.  

But no one is an island. We learn equally from our own and the experiences of others. The marrying of our own and the ideas of others is where the future is unlocked. And the real encouragement of others can be the nudge you need to keep going when you are on the brink of tearing that page. But those ‘others’ are rare. They are those who know you personally, who are invested in your development, who take a genuine interest in your wellbeing and who share in your common aspirations. Family, friends, valued mentors and long-time followers of your work. These are the people you listen to. You can be assured that their criticism is constructive, intending only to improve your work – a shared interest. Their suggestions are considered and nuanced – you can learn from the experiences of others. Their encouragement is real – they want to help you reach your destination. And their complements are grounded and genuine – learn to accept them graciously. These are the people who matter, whom you can learn and grow from, and to whom you can unapologetically and without ego present your work to in its entirety for the simple purpose of enjoying and learning from a shared experience. You’re reading this, so I know you’re one of these rare people. So to you I say: here’s my latest offering. It’s far from perfect, but I stand by its premise and purpose, the one I know we all here share – the desire to contribute to the good in this world and hopefully, in our own way, make it a better place for all of us who live in it. I sat down two hours ago to write a few lines of an intro to Our Last Day before delving into some notes, and now here we are – one lengthy ramble and a cold cup of coffee later. Oh dear, how much patience you have! Thank you for another year of your company, and I wish you the very best for the new year. What adventures we will have! Now then, on to what I had intended to be writing all this time, some notes.  

Notes 

This project began when I stumbled across a video on YouTube. It was made by a tourist and history enthusiast touring Andalucía and southern Portugal during which he visits some of the iconic medieval landmarks of Al-Andalus. But what he was saying shocked me. His video led me to a book that I was unaware of called The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise by Dario Fernandez Morera. It sickened me. It was a real struggle to get through it. It is right wing Islamophobic conservative Christianity posing as historical revisionism. I fear I may have been unclear about this fact in this video where I seem to position myself in opposition to historical revisionism. In academic history, revisionism is simply the reinterpretation of the historical narrative. This is a good and natural thing. It keeps the field fresh and relevant. The issue arises when this practice is adopted to disguise certain agendas. As I mentioned in the film, it is rare to find a completely unbiased, objective interpretation of historical events. That is to be expected, and historians are well trained in identifying such motives in texts where even the author was unaware of such existing. But Fernandez Morera was very much aware of what he was writing. He unsuccessfully tries to hide his pro-hardline Christianity, imperialist, and xenophobic message within the boundaries of historical revisionism. Worse yet, he angles himself in opposition to an imagined army of ‘liberal scholars’ who are entrenched in the ‘mainstream’ and working to bring down western values. He manages to appeal to both anti-Islam and anti-academic factions at once, styling himself as a lone voice crying in the wind, shot down by the elitist ‘academics’. I say ‘imagined army’ as throughout the book he constructs numerous strawmen adversaries to do battle against, the most egregious of which is the supposed line ‘liberal scholars’ take of Medieval Spain under Islam as being a wonderful place of multicultural and religious ‘tolerance’, portraying tolerance in the sense of 21st century equality. Any 18-year-old taking History 101 would identify this as a ludicrous thesis. Nowhere in current academia will you find scholars of medieval Iberia suggesting this. Yet Fernandez Morera insists that this is the ‘mainstream’ narrative, spouted by truth-hiding academics being paid by Islamic states. The weapon being aimed here are those already caught in the trap of racism, xenophobia and anti-academia. The target is the historical truth of Medieval Spain. And the collateral damage are those non-suspecting people with no ideological affiliation who simply happen to pick up a book about an unfamiliar and interesting topic and come away lied to, manipulated, and misinformed by a man who cares little about contributing a genuine revision of Al-Andalus to the field of Medieval studies, but rather more about using such as a medium through which to channel hate, suspicion, and division.  

Those familiar with Spanish history will notice an absence of two fundamental concepts: Reconquista and Convivencia. These terms respectively refer to the gradual conquest of Al-Andalus by the independent Christian Kingdoms of the north of the peninsula (ie. Aragon, Navarre, Leon etc. which I term ‘northern kingdoms’ in the film to avoid imparting the impression that these warring kingdoms were united in their shared religion against the Islamic south – in reality they fought bitterly against each other just as the various Islamic caliphates and factions did), and the society that existed in the Caliphate of Cordoba in which the three Abrahamic faiths literally ‘lived together’. One cannot really engage with this period in Spanish history without addressing these concepts, which made my decision to omit them a pain whilst writing the script. Terms are invented for convenience, and for a reason! But I wanted to see if I could successfully convey the story of Al-Andalus without relying on these established terms which, although convenient, carry connotations and the weight of decades of changing scholarship. I’m not sure how successful I was – feedback from those both versed and unversed in Spanish history is welcome.  

The film suffers from its shortness. A ten-part series could easily be made on this topic and time would still be limited. I feel uncomfortable having so rapidly summarised the post-Caliphate era, the Taifa states and the dynamic period of the Almoravids, Almohads, and significant Christian expansion. If this film sparked an interest in diving deeper into the history of the 11th- 15th centuries in Spain I can only apologise in advance for the hours you will lose trying to wrap your head around the confusion, surprises, violence and politicking that comes with it. It really is a wild ride.  

But history was only ever secondary to this film. More urgent for me to convey was the general patterns one can identify over the course of this period in Spain and in our modern engagement with it: the complexity in understanding differing population groups in history and the superimposing of labels and motives onto fluid multifaceted phenomena such as states, cultures and religions; how culture and religion can be weaponised as a motivating or justifying means of black-and-white, us verses them scenarios; how extremism and fanaticism of any kind is bad news for society as a whole, and of course, prompt questioning as to how all of these can be identified existing in the 21st century just as in the 12th century.  

This is a pretty weighty topic, I am aware, and perhaps not one so obviously immediate to a project I began in order to travel the world. But look at the world now, a year on. Russia has invaded a sovereign state, a shaky Afghan republic has been replaced with a fundamentalist Islamic regime, in Iran the streets have been bloodied by a government violently repressing segments of the population opposed to such fundamentalism, and suddenly I can’t drive east anymore. I don’t need to preach to the choir and outline the deep divisions in American society to my west, suffice to say that we all have a renewed appreciation for the fragility of democracy. So make no mistake, this topic is immediate to us all. Extremism has taken many faces, be it far-left, far-right, Christian or Islamic, it’s nothing new. But precisely because it’s nothing new we can equip ourselves with the knowledge to identify and isolate it before it takes over, if only we care enough to do so.