Its origins are rural, the history of which is difficult to ascertain because it has been handed down from generation to generation, lacking written documentation and historical references. Some authors, among them José María Caballero Bonald, say that the Fiesta is Archaic and Moorish in its origins.
“The Fiesta of Verdiales is an Archaic musical monument, a cultural jewel of Málaga. More specifically, it is a sacred relic of a very remote Mediterranean past, which lives on in the music, song, dance and hats adorned with flowers linking the Fiesta of Verdiales with nothing less that the remotest religious cults of earth goddess and sun. Perhaps it’s greatest achievement is that it has been able to survive for millennia, stubbornly resisting successive invasions and colonization that have destroyed almost all signs of the ancient culture and history along the coast and mountains of Málaga. After the Visigoth invasion and colonization of the Byzantines, the Islamic colonization and subsequent conquest of the Christian Castilians, the only ancient signs of Malagueno history and identity that remain are its wine, raisins, small limed-white villages perched in its costal mountains and The Fiesta of Verdiales.”
Although ancient elements exist in other strains of European folk music, the Fiesta of Verdiales seems to be the only multi-millennium rural music and dance in existence in Europe. If nothing else, unique as a country orchestra that has survived for