‘For He Bestirred Himself to Protect the Land from the Moors’

Abstract

This article considers two graphic novels that depict and deal with two separate periods during the Spanish Reconquista [Reconquest] that was fought during the Middle Ages by the Christian kingdoms to roll back the Muslim domination of the Iberian peninsula. Though written more than thirty years apart, El Cid (1971–1984), by Antonio Hernández Palacios, and 1212: Las Navas de Tolosa (2016), by Jesús Cano de la Iglesia, present interesting and at times quite similar views of the medieval Spanish past, even though the periods they depict were arguably very different from each other. This article analyses the ways in which both authors depict the themes of Spain, the crusading movement, and ‘otherness’ in their texts, and it considers the potential influences behind their depictions of such themes.