The story of this place
On 16 July 1212, an allied Christian army under Alfonso VIII of Castile, with the kings of Aragon and Navarre and thousands of foreign crusaders, met the Almohad caliph Muhammad al-Nasir in the Sierra Morena. Legend holds a local shepherd, Martín Halaja, showed the Christians a hidden mountain pass that let them fall on the Muslim camp. The rout was total; the caliph fled, and the Almohad empire in Spain never recovered, opening Andalusia to conquest within decades. Chain-mail booty was so plentiful that a nearby village, La Carolina area, entered legend, and the battle became a founding myth of the Reconquista.