Professor Eduard Mira once again delves into historical recreation on this 800th anniversary year of the birth of Jaime I, and the 550 anniversary of the death of Alfonso the Magnanimous. Months of preparations with attention to  the small-est details have been under way for the Medieval Civil Parade, with 750 people and 150 horses marching through Valencia on October 9.

How would you sum up the historical greatness of Jaime I?
Jaime I is a sort of the father of the nation, in a high-sounding and antiquated way, with whom modern Valencia began. He is a man who marks a before and after for Valencians, who built this town on an institutional basis. He created a new kingdom with new institutions, one that wasn’t an extension of Aragon as their feudal lords would have liked, nor of Catalonia.

Besides being a conqueror, was he moderniser?
He established  a kingdom that was urban and of an unusually modernity in Europe that enabled the forging of a new society. It was an urban and autono-mous kingdom with an institutional structure, a justice system and administra-tion, and with its own coins, weights and measurements. The legal codes of the kingdom are simply an extrapolation of the codes of law of the city of Valencia.

What was Valencia, the jewel of this new kingdom, like?
Valencia went from being practical nothing at all, whose population was leaving when Jaime I took the city, to being the richest and most dynamic of the Iberian peninsula in a short period of time. It became one of the main cities of Europe, not only in terms of population but for its economic, political, cultural and scien-tific dynamism. It was a record having achieved this with an eminently urban base.

What is the spirit of the commemoration?
We live in an era eminently urban, neo-urban, and we want to remember a Europe that produced a network of cities that was consolidated at the end of the  Middle Ages - the most beautiful cities in Europe, capable of building towers 160 metres high in Strasbourg or a building such as the Lonja in Valencia, much superior to any produced by the Italian Renaissance. From our present urban era, I look back at the founding moment of Jaime I through the moment of splendour which arrived with Alfonso the Magnanimous, which is when the work of Jaime I was forged politically .

What is the celebration to consist of?
Apart from the exhibitions, congresses and books, we are going to put on a great parade around Alfonso the Magnanimous in Alicante, and on October 9, a great medieval civil procession in Valencia in the afternoon. It is a recreation, a rigorous historical reconstruction of that which was organised by Alfonso the Magnanimous. The 200 anniversary was celebrated because he had a great moral sense of royal legitimacy and dignity, and showing his  relationship with his  ancestor Jaime I gives him his pedigree.

So he chose Valencia?
Choosing Valencia was satisfying because it was the city that treated him the best, and where he did not feel restricted to old codes, like in Saragossa or Bar-celona. He also had an armed militia here, the Centenar de la Ploma.  Jaime I will be seen through the eyes of Alfonso the Magnanimous who organised the great cavalcade in 1428 to commemorate his ancestor.

Will this be all very well documented?
Valencia is a city that is already established, that already has guilds, the Cente-nar de la Ploma and other  bodies. We have a clear idea of what it was like and we have used some other elements and documents, manuscripts and facsimi-les as a base. The twenty-first century remembers the thirteenth century as de-picted by the fifteenth, recalling its origins as a kingdom through its moment of greatest splendour. Alfonso the Magnanimous declared October 9 a holiday by rule for all Valencians.

Isn´t it a military holiday?
There is no holiday without war, nor war without holiday. The Centenar de la Ploma, the militia which defended freedom, is going to march because without an army, there is no freedom. It is going to be a very nice celebration for which a great historical reconstruction has been put on , like  the Palio de Siena cele-bration. This event in Valencia could become institutionalized and increasingly important in the future. It is not  historicism but a real and authentic recreation, a represented reconstruction of the past. For this matter, we have carefully se-lected the  heraldry, the costumes, as well as the 750 participants and 120 horses.
 
And how can we continue to vindicate and celebrate  Jaime I?
By continuing to expand the October 9 holiday, because Jaime I has always been beyond the concept of good and bad, it has been celebrated by monar-chists and republicans, conservatives and revolutionaries, reds and blues.

Have the politicians lacked ideas for this commemoration?
There is the problem with money, but more has been done here than in Catalo-nia, Mallorca, or Aragon, and certainly a lot more than Montpellier, his place of birth.