Hi Robert,
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Originally Posted by Robert Gray
Chris
From what you say, and you argue your case well, it would seem that there is no live Spanish tradition of knife fighting. If so, what about other European countries like Italy, especially its southern regions?
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First I should declare that as a collector, my focus is on the Spanish `navaja' and the Gaucho' `facon' and its usage in Spain and Latin America. As I have no useful command over languages other than Spanish, I cannot do more than hazard a guess as to what prevails in other European nations. However, I do feel that the situation is unlikely to be very different, for the simple reason that they have all came a long way from the harsh and labour intensive agricultural economies, and the attendant impoverished lifestyle that allowed knives to play such an important role.
BTW: I don't quite know what you mean by living tradition. If you mean the ongoing settling of private disputes with knives, that is dueling, then that went out of fashion a very long time ago - Social changes and modern law enforcement took care of that. If on the other hand you mean that some degree of criminal violence involving knives still takes place amongst the impoverished, as all over the world, then there is a living tradition, though its significance eludes me.
In the closing years of the twentieth century, various knife arts, of Asian and military provenance, have made their appearance in Europe as elsewhere. Also the WMA boom has caught up with Europe and in the wake of the recent enthusiasm for lost European combative arts, there are instructors who claim to have either re-discovered or being the heir to hitherto unknown but ancient and sophisticated knife fighting systems. Given the total absence of historical manuals and schools, it is impossible to validate any of these claims and as far as I am aware, none have demonstrated a credible link to the past.
Discounting intentional fraud, the best that can said for these newly discovered systems is that until their exponents bring forth convincing demonstration of their links to the past, it has to be assumed that what they are offering are re-packaged versions of the aforementioned new arts. This is not to say that they are bad, but that they are not traditional.
In any event, we have to remember that no fighting art can remain immune to the changes brought on by time; Nineteenth century, or earlier popular combative system evolved in regional isolation and in response to the legal, social and combative requirements of the times. Ancient `navaja' or `facon' fighting systems (if there were indeed any) could not possibly find application in settings as radically different as that presented by modern societies, unless so modified as to be unrecognizable - For one, anyone who tried to walk down a street with a large
`navaja' or `facon' tucked in the belt would face immediate arrest for being illegally armed and if the offender's declared intention was to fight a duel, then the mandatory sentence would be greatly increased.
Roughly a year ago this topic was given a good trashing on this forum when someone brought up the subject of Gypsy knife fighting. Have read of it:
http://www.vikingsword.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/002305.html
Cheers
Chris