Societat de Festers del Santíssim Crist de l'Agonia

Born in 1865 with the idea of opposing a Saracen fleet to the Christian in naval combat in the waters of the Clariano River, they manned a new frigate, called “Almanzor”, in memory of the fearsome and victorious warrior Muhammad Ibn Abi Amir, known like al-Mansur, “The Victorious”. Acquired possibly with the funds contributed by the members of the Board of Directors of Festes, of the Casino “El Porvenir” or the members of the row itself.

His participation was postponed for the following year due to cholera morbo. The new line, under the name of Moros Marinos, forged at the headquarters of the Casino of “El Porvenir”, came to aggrandize the Saracen hosts in “Turkish” clothing and carrying polished wooden shovels. It was formed by important people, with high economic power, members and sympathizers of the conservative party, whose relationship remains hidden between the seams of our history.

For just over a century and a half, they walk triumphantly through streets and squares at the target and at the entrance to the pasdobles and marches moras agreements and at the beginnings of military marches; in the sacrifice of the mass and in the procession, they perform the rite that since 1860 has led to Ontinyent becoming a Christian and a Moor.

Over the course of many years, accompanied by music, they showed the beauty of their missing dance, recorded in the press throughout the 19th and part of the 20th centuries, and in a unique way at the Valencia Regional Exhibition (1909) . In the same way as the long-awaited “Nit del Riu”, gifted with joys and amusements, in which the frigate “Almanzor” took center stage, next to the Christian “Méndez Núñez”, decorated and illuminated in the Venetian style and dragged by mules, they navigated the waters of the Clariano River to make their own the historical scenes linked to the sea, recalling past times in which people came to defend our coasts from the attacks of Berber and Tunisian pirates.

Plying the seas of the festival, the Moors of the Seas have guided the Saracen hosts on countless occasions, they carry and guard the ensign with the crescent moon and recite the grandiloquent verses of the embassy from the deck of the frigate, where old and new generations of seafarers hoist all their wishes and illusions between days captivated by a town and its people.