Introduction

      Every year, on the Sunday before 5 October, the feast day of St. Froilán, the inhabitants of the northern Spanish city of León celebrate a curious and eye-catching popular festival known simply as Las Cantaderas.¹ The purpose of the fiesta is to commemorate the agreement supposedly reached by the Christian kings of Asturias in the late eighth century, by which they undertook to deliver one hundred maidens (cien doncellas) to the emir of Muslim-ruled Iberia, ‘Abd al-Raḥmān I (756–88), in annual payment of tribute. Tradition records that this humiliating obligation was later expunged by King Ramiro I (842–50), who, with the miraculous assistance of St. James, defeated a large Muslim army at Clavijo in the Rioja in 844.² During the Leonese festivities, a theatrical ceremony takes place, as a group of young women (the cantaderas themselves), demurely dressed in medieval costume, are instructed to dance by a woman known as the sotadera, usually veiled, whose task it supposedly is to lead them on the long journey southward to join the emir’s harem in Córdoba. However, the sotadera takes the group on an alternative route, from the square in front of the old town hall, accompanied by local dignitaries and mace bearers, as far as the cathedral. There, further singing and dancing take place, speeches are delivered by the great and the good, Mass is held, and offerings are made to the Virgin Mary to give thanks for the safe delivery of the women from the clutches of the infidel.

      The origins of the festival of Las Cantaderas, which until relatively recently was held on Assumption Day (15 August), can be traced back to at least the sixteenth century. By 1596, when Atanasio de Lobera published his history of the city and church of León, the festival was already well established and the celebrations stretched over three days, combining both popular and religious elements.³ Lobera’s description of Las Cantaderas records that the four principal parishes of León—San Marcelo, Santa Ana, San Martín, and Nuestra Señora del Mercado—each sent twelve girls to the procession every year, all of them dressed to the nines in brocades and silks, and adorned with gold and silver jewelry, pearls, and other precious stones. The girls who took part in the ceremony were reportedly between ten and twelve years old, although if we are to believe Francisco López de Úbeda’s picaresque novel La pícara Justina, published in 1605, many may have been of marriageable age, as old as eighteen or twenty.⁴ As to whether they were all virgins, as was widely claimed, López de Úbeda, through his lead character Justina, expressed jocular skepticism, declaring that it would be medio milagro (a near miracle) if it were true.⁵ López de Úbeda also paints a graphic description of the sotadera, whom he describes in stark terms as “the oldest and most evil thing that I ever saw in my whole life,” a remark that may have been designed to underline her “otherness” to the beautiful, supposedly virginal Christian cantaderas.⁶ This contrast may have been further reinforced if, as has been suggested, the role of the sotadera was typically played by a “marginalized” woman, perhaps of Morisco or gypsy stock, or even a former prostitute.⁷ The sotadera was meant to play the key role of intermediary between