Description
Babieca
Babieca by Miguel Matos is a tremendously smoky and animalic fragrance with notes of leather, tobacco, hay with a wonderful gourmand flair.
Babieca is a perfume that evokes moments of the Spanish Reconquest. A fragrance with the aromas of ancient horsed mounted battles related to the crusades. The fragrance is uniquely bold in its composition, very smoky and animalic in character but ultimately refined, provocative and unique.
Babieca was El Cid’s war horse. El Cid is also known as “mío Cid” or “El Cid Campeador” (expert in field battles). The “Cantar de “mío Cid” is an anonymous “cantar de gesta” that narrates heroic deeds inspired by the last years of the life of the Castilian knight Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, the most famous hero of the Spanish Reconquest. He is a figure halfway between historical and legendary reality. El Cid Campeador” came to dominate practically the whole of the eastern Iberian Peninsula at the end of the 11th century along with his infamous horse Babieca.
There are several historical accounts of El Cid and Babieca. One well-known legend about El Cid describes how he acquired the horse. According to this story, Rodrigo’s godfather, Pedro El Grande, was a monk of a Carthusian monastery. Peter’s coming of age gift to El Cid was his choice of a horse from an Andalusian herd. “Choose the horse you like best“. And so, Rodrigo chose a particularly ugly specimen, so to his disappointed godfather, he exclaimed: “that’s a Babieca”. In other words, a horse with little presence, weak and clumsy. It thus became the name of El Cid’s horse. However, with the passing of time Babieca would become an exceptionally famous historical horse. Finally, many people do not know this, but Babieca was a mare.
We hope that our perfume Babieca inspires a lot of love and affection for horses as well as history and culture in general. And just as in the case of Babieca, never judge a book by its cover…
