En Cartama me he criado

En Cartama me he criado is the romance Abindarráez sings while riding toward Coín to meet Jarifa, making his private declaration of love the scene’s audible prelude to capture. Its compact geography traces his life from Granada through Cártama and Álora to Coín, but its repeated destination carries the greater force: the place where he expects to fulfill his love is also the place his captivity will briefly put out of reach. In the embedded tale told by Felismena, the song makes longing audible just before the story tests it against arms, captivity, and a promise kept.

Place in the Tale

Felismena tells the story at the house of the wise Felicia, after dinner, at Felicia’s request for a history or occurrence from Vandalia. The song itself belongs to the earlier action that Felismena recounts. Rodrigo de Narváez, the governor of Álora and Antequera, rides out at night with nine men to see whether the neighboring Moorish forces have left an opportunity to be surprised. At a fork in the road, his party divides, and the five men on one route hear a man singing and sighing. They hide among trees and see Abindarráez approaching on horseback.

The romance is thus encountered before its singer is identified or his story explained. The patrol hears in it the signs of a passion, but its attention is also drawn to the possible capture of a valuable opponent. That gap between the song’s emotional meaning and the soldiers’ practical purpose gives the brief lyric its dramatic situation: Abindarráez sings openly of love while armed riders lie in wait to stop him.

A Geography of Love and Belonging

The song’s opening movement names four places in a sequence: Abindarráez was raised in Cártama, born first in Granada, served as a frontier man near Álora, and fell in love at Coín. The locations provide more than a route. They distinguish birth, upbringing, military association, and emotional attachment, arranging his identity as a passage through places rather than reducing it to a single origin. His later account to Narváez confirms that he was born in Granada and raised in Cártama, and that he belongs to the Abencerrajes of Granada.

The second movement revisits those places in a different order. Granada and Cártama are recalled, but Coín becomes the place where he has given his faith and freedom; Álora returns as the frontier from which he comes. This rearrangement shifts the song from a brief account of biography to a declaration of present allegiance. The singer’s life has geographic breadth, but love concentrates it: his faith is at Coín, and he is emotionally located where his beloved is.

That concentration is sharpened by the repeated return to Coín. The song closes its first movement with his love there, then circles back to that attachment after naming his earlier homes and his frontier identity. The recurrence gives the romance a refrain-like pull, even as the story presents it in two successive lyric units. The journey is not simply away from Álora; it is directed toward the place where he believes his private hope will be fulfilled.

The Song and the Ambush

The narrator says the men hear a romance sung in Arabic, then supplies its words in Spanish. The lyric therefore reaches the reader through a translation within Felismena’s larger narration. Its presence brings Abindarráez’s voice into the scene before he speaks at length in prose: first as a singer whose sighs reveal a love-passion, and then as the armed rider whom the hidden Christians judge by his appearance and conduct.

His arrival makes the difference between song and circumstance stark. He wears a crimson damask riding garment, carries a sword, shield, and lance, and rides a large gray horse. The five men attack. Although wounded in the thigh and eventually separated from his lance, he fights with such skill that he knocks down three of his attackers; when he appears to flee, he recovers a fallen lance with a quick movement from the saddle and renews the fight. The song’s forward motion toward Coín is interrupted by this violent encounter, but its emotional premise remains intact: he is traveling for love, not seeking combat.

Narváez arrives after a horn signals for help and recognizes the Moor’s courage. Once Abindarráez is captured, he asks that the others move away so that he can explain the source of his grief. The romance has already given the audience the essential direction of that explanation. Its repeated devotion to Coín prepares the revelation that he had been summoned there by Jarifa and expected to marry her.

From Lyric Declaration to Narrative Disclosure

In his account to Narváez, Abindarráez explains that the misfortunes of the Abencerrajes taught him to expect adversity. He recounts the family’s former prestige in Granada, its reputation for courage, generosity, and service to ladies, and its destruction after a disputed accusation that members had conspired against the king. The song’s opening reference to his birth in Granada thus carries a history that the lyric itself does not disclose: he belongs to a once-honored lineage now marked by political disaster.

His personal route through Cártama and Álora leads to the love that the song makes its center. He had been called to Coín by Jarifa, whose father was away, and set out at night in a splendid outfit to meet her. Abindarráez tells Narváez that he was going to see and marry the woman he loved; instead, he finds himself wounded and captive at the moment he believes his happiness is within reach. The song’s geography consequently becomes more than a map of his past. It points toward the meeting whose delay gives the capture its particular emotional cost.

Narváez responds by offering Abindarráez freedom to continue to Coín if he promises to return to captivity within three days. Abindarráez accepts the condition and travels onward on a horse supplied by Narváez, since his own was injured in the encounter. The promise transforms the values implicit in the song into action: devotion leads him onward, but his honor requires him to return. Jarifa meets him at Coín, and when he comes back to Álora she accompanies him, so that the journey first named in song becomes a shared return under the terms of his pledge.

Narrative Significance

The romance binds several strands of the embedded tale in a few recurring place names: Abindarráez’s family history, his military position on the frontier, and his love for Jarifa. Its repetition of Coín makes the emotional destination plain before the story’s conflict is disclosed, while the interruption by an ambush turns anticipated fulfillment into a test of endurance and fidelity. The song does not merely decorate the encounter; it lets the reader hear what the soldiers partly overlook when they focus on the prospect of taking a prisoner.

Its placement also establishes the tale’s distinctive interplay of religious and political difference with shared codes of conduct. Abindarráez is identified as a Moorish lover and warrior; Narváez is a Christian captain who first defeats and captures him. Yet Narváez grants him temporary liberty, trusts his promise to return, and later intervenes on behalf of Abindarráez and Jarifa. The lyric itself does not resolve the conflict, but it frames the captive as a person whose attachments and honor can be recognized across the boundary between the two sides. Its intimate itinerary opens onto a story in which the meaning of a promise is proved through action.