Of Hearts and Heroes in Teba
Of Hearts and Heroes in Teba
by David Eugene Perry
The Scottish flag shares pride of place alongside that of Andalucía in the center of Teba
After our deep dive into the poetry and tragedy of Federico García Lorca in Granada and Fuentes Vaqueros, Alfredo and I drove homeward toward Grazalema — with a deliberate detour to the hilltop town of Teba.
It is a place where Scottish legend and Spanish history intertwine.
Next week marks the anniversary of the Battle of Teba (August 25, 1330), when the forces of King Alfonso XI of Castile clashed with the Moors of Granada. Among Alfonso’s allies was Sir James Douglas, the famed “Black Douglas” of Scotland, fulfilling the dying wish of his king, Robert the Bruce: to carry his embalmed heart to the Holy Land.
The story is as dramatic as any medieval ballad. Robert the Bruce had died in 1329, asking that his heart be placed in a silver reliquary and borne east in a final symbolic crusade. Douglas, his most trusted knight, set out with companions and joined Alfonso XI’s campaign against the Moors along the way. During a skirmish outside Teba, Douglas found himself surrounded. Legend says he hurled the casket forward, calling, “Go first as thou wert wont, noble heart, Douglas will follow thee or die!” He did, and so ended a knight’s vow.
The heart made it back to Scotland, buried at Melrose Abbey in the Borders, while Robert’s body rests at Dunfermline Abbey in Fife. Douglas’s body lies in St Bride’s Kirk, Lanarkshire.
Every August, Teba remembers this shared Scottish-Spanish moment with Douglas Days — medieval reenactments, music, parades, and tartan against the Andalusian sky. The festival begins next week, and if ever there was a place where history and pageantry meet, it is here.
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Other famous hearts that lie far from their bodies:
This tradition of separating heart from body — sometimes for political symbolism, sometimes for romance, sometimes for sheer practicality — is surprisingly common in history. Teba’s tale fits into a longer lineage:
Richard the Lionheart (1157–1199)
• Body: Fontevraud Abbey, Anjou, alongside his parents, Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine.
• Heart: Sealed in a lead casket and buried in Rouen Cathedral, capital of his Duchy of Normandy — a political gesture cementing his French holdings.
• Viscera: Buried at Châlus, where he died from an arrow wound.
Anne Boleyn (1501–1536) (legendary)
• Beheaded in 1536, she was buried in St Peter ad Vincula, Tower of London.
• Suffolk legend says her heart was secretly removed and interred at St Mary’s Church, Erwarton, near her family home. No proof survives, but local tradition holds fast to the tale.
Mary, Queen of Scots (1542–1587) (traditional account)
• Executed at Fotheringhay Castle; initially buried at Peterborough Cathedral, later reinterred in Westminster Abbey.
• Some traditions claim her embalmed heart was secretly buried in Haddington, East Lothian — an act of returning her heart to Scotland.
Voltaire (1694–1778)
• Body: Interred in the Panthéon, Paris, as a hero of the Enlightenment.
• Heart: Preserved in an urn at the Bibliothèque Nationale, inscribed, “His spirit is everywhere, and his heart is here.”
Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849)
• Body: Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris.
• Heart: Smuggled by his sister Ludwika to Warsaw in a jar of cognac, fulfilling his wish to rest in his homeland. It lies in the Holy Cross Church, enshrined in a pillar.
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
• Drowned in the Gulf of Spezia, Italy.
• During the beach cremation, his heart — possibly calcified from tuberculosis — refused to burn. Mary Shelley kept it wrapped in silk until it was buried with their son in Bournemouth.
Lord Byron (1788–1824)
• Died in Missolonghi, Greece, during the War of Independence.
• His body was returned to England for burial, but his heart and viscera were interred in Greece. Alfredo and I visited the whitewashed monument there — a quiet testament to Byron’s devotion to Greek freedom.
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)
• Ashes: Westminster Abbey’s Poets’ Corner.
• Heart: Buried in Stinsford, Dorset — though village lore says a cat made off with it before burial, prompting its replacement with a pig’s heart. Most historians call this a macabre rural myth.
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From Melrose to Missolonghi, Rouen to Warsaw, these divided burials tell a common truth: the heart — in life and legend — belongs where love, loyalty, and longing are strongest.
And here in Teba, that truth is told every August, when the banners fly, the bagpipes sound, and the streets remember the day a Scottish knight, far from home, kept his king’s last promise.