L’Alcora, ‘the place of the twelve battles’MEDITERRANEAN
L’AlcoraXIX century. In just four decades, thousands of men face each other on the same battlefield up to twelve times.
A “surprising, unusual and unnoticed case to date” in which he wanted to delve deeper into a book Agustín Pacheco Fernándeza lieutenant colonel specialist in weapons mechanics, who, after participating in missions around the world, decided to take a new direction in his professional life and dedicate himself to one of his passions, military history.
Author or co-author of more than fifteen books and catalogsPacheco explores in his latest publication, l’Alcora, the place of the twelve battles, published by the Ministry of Defense, “the strategic motivations and tactical stubbornness of some military leaders” that turned the capital of l’Alcalatén into ” a slaughterhouse of beardless young men and seasoned veterans from half the world.
Uncommon items
However, in addition to delving into the purely warlike and historical elements, he also wanted to include “other aspects that are recurrently omitted in history books”, such as fog, rain, inclement heat and absolute scarcity of water, high mountains and inhospitable dry roads, misery, resignation, exhaustion, camaraderie, enthusiasm and oblivion. “Because war is also that, and not just shots and panegyrics arranged on paper,” he says.
Why write about l’Alcora?
Among the motivations that encouraged him to focus on this historical stage and specifically in l’Alcora, Pacheco, an Extremaduran living in Madrid in love with the province of Castellón (summer in Torreblanca), says that in the summer of 2019 he visited the town several times alcorina to, as he relates in the introduction of his book, observe and inspect one of the battlefields where the Zouaves had fought.
When reading the explanatory labels found in one of the defensive works and one of the catalogs available in the Museum of Ceramics, he detected that they contained “significant errors.” This, together with completing a Master’s Degree in Military History of Spain, encouraged him to investigate some events that occurred in the population, “that have gone almost unnoticed by historiography.”
Pacheco defines this project as “an enriching adventure”, which he began “expectant and excited” and enjoyed “as a happy child does.” «A cultural and human adventure in which I have learned a lot and have met extraordinary people and, ultimately, in which I have savored every teaching, every advice, every discovery of a forgotten file, every clue towards a new path, or every talk friendly with someone who shared the same passion as you”, since “the prize is the path and not the goal.”
Personal wishes
As a personal wish, he would like his book to serve as a model for those students who are planning to present a final master’s thesis (TFM) on military history. Although above all he would love for in the near future “professional historians and competent authorities to realize the archaeological, cultural and economic potential that the Sierra de l’Alcora, the place of the twelve battles, would have,” he concludes.
