- Joined
- Aug 7, 2001
- Messages
- 54,631
Mystery of the Malian found up a Spanish mountain
By Elizabeth Nash in Madrid
Published: 18 August 2007
The young African gave no explanation of why he was wandering alone on the highest peak in Spain, in the windy, snow-capped Sierra Nevada, clad in only in a T-shirt, light trousers and flipflops.
He sang as he strode, and told the group of climbers who crossed his path that he was called Tony Brascons, was 27 and came from Mali. But he wouldn't tell them, or the police who have detained him, how he came to be lost so far from home on a rugged mountainside where temperatures had dropped below freezing in recent nights.
Tony Brascons carried no provisions, and the well-equipped mountaineers who met him feared for his physical state. They persuaded him to accompany them to a nearby refuge, a rough stone shelter at Cariguela, 3,200m up, near the peak of the Veleta mountain, and gave him food and water. They asked if he wanted more help, offering to contact the authorities, but he pleaded with them in sign language not to tell anyone, that he would just rest.
So his would-be saviours were not surprised when, before they had even walked out of sight to resume their own climb, to glimpse the young stranger slip from his refuge and disappear amid the peaks. He headed towards the Mulhacen (3,482m), the highest mountain in Spain, snowbound even in mid-August.
A forest ranger found him near the top, and brought him down 1,000m to Capileira, and called the police. They could find no more about him except that he had spent a night on the bare mountain before meeting anyone.
Speaking neither French nor Spanish, he somehow managed to convey to the baffled authorities that he owed his feat of endurance to "strong legs, strong legs".
Tony Brascons seems to have made the exact transcontinental journey, only four centuries later and in reverse, of Judar Pasha, a Muslim expelled from a mountain hideout near Granada, who raised an army that seized Timbuctu, capital of Mali, and founded an empire.
Judar Pasha, known in Spain as Jaudar Baxa, was a morisco, a Muslim who converted to Christianity to avoid expulsion after Catholic monarchs reconquered Moorish Spain in 1492.
But later even Moriscos were persecuted, and many, like Judar, returned to their Muslim roots and took refuge in the Caves of Almanzora, in a remote mountainside east of Granada.
They rose in rebellion in 1569 and were expelled in 1572, mostly fleeing across the Mediterranean to North Africa.
Judar rallied an army of 4,000 Andaluz exiles, put himself at the service of the sultan of Marrakesh and in 1591 conquered the kingdom of Dogon, or Songhai, which includes present-day Mali.
He installed himself in Timbuctu, where Andaluzes and their descendents ruled until Europeans invaded in 1741.
Necessity probably forced Tony Brascons, too, to abandon his homeland, leaving everything behind. Police freed him yesterday, undecided whether or not to repatriate him for having no papers.
http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article2874109.ece
By Elizabeth Nash in Madrid
Published: 18 August 2007
The young African gave no explanation of why he was wandering alone on the highest peak in Spain, in the windy, snow-capped Sierra Nevada, clad in only in a T-shirt, light trousers and flipflops.
He sang as he strode, and told the group of climbers who crossed his path that he was called Tony Brascons, was 27 and came from Mali. But he wouldn't tell them, or the police who have detained him, how he came to be lost so far from home on a rugged mountainside where temperatures had dropped below freezing in recent nights.
Tony Brascons carried no provisions, and the well-equipped mountaineers who met him feared for his physical state. They persuaded him to accompany them to a nearby refuge, a rough stone shelter at Cariguela, 3,200m up, near the peak of the Veleta mountain, and gave him food and water. They asked if he wanted more help, offering to contact the authorities, but he pleaded with them in sign language not to tell anyone, that he would just rest.
So his would-be saviours were not surprised when, before they had even walked out of sight to resume their own climb, to glimpse the young stranger slip from his refuge and disappear amid the peaks. He headed towards the Mulhacen (3,482m), the highest mountain in Spain, snowbound even in mid-August.
A forest ranger found him near the top, and brought him down 1,000m to Capileira, and called the police. They could find no more about him except that he had spent a night on the bare mountain before meeting anyone.
Speaking neither French nor Spanish, he somehow managed to convey to the baffled authorities that he owed his feat of endurance to "strong legs, strong legs".
Tony Brascons seems to have made the exact transcontinental journey, only four centuries later and in reverse, of Judar Pasha, a Muslim expelled from a mountain hideout near Granada, who raised an army that seized Timbuctu, capital of Mali, and founded an empire.
Judar Pasha, known in Spain as Jaudar Baxa, was a morisco, a Muslim who converted to Christianity to avoid expulsion after Catholic monarchs reconquered Moorish Spain in 1492.
But later even Moriscos were persecuted, and many, like Judar, returned to their Muslim roots and took refuge in the Caves of Almanzora, in a remote mountainside east of Granada.
They rose in rebellion in 1569 and were expelled in 1572, mostly fleeing across the Mediterranean to North Africa.
Judar rallied an army of 4,000 Andaluz exiles, put himself at the service of the sultan of Marrakesh and in 1591 conquered the kingdom of Dogon, or Songhai, which includes present-day Mali.
He installed himself in Timbuctu, where Andaluzes and their descendents ruled until Europeans invaded in 1741.
Necessity probably forced Tony Brascons, too, to abandon his homeland, leaving everything behind. Police freed him yesterday, undecided whether or not to repatriate him for having no papers.
http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article2874109.ece
