Spanish Morocco Berber sword

[fernando]

Originally Posted by Jim McDougall

... It seems a lot of these swords were essentially forerunners of what became broadly termed machetes, and it seems that was primarily their function, the clearing of heavy undergrowth and vegetation in these tropical climes ...

Precisely; the first paragraph in Calvó's article MACHETES DEL EJÉRCITO DE ULTRAMAR EN CUBA Y PUERTO RICO reads:
In the Antilles, the vegetation made of the jungle machetes an useful everyday working tool and its introduction as an equipment for its garrison forces is evidenced before 1868, in which started in Cuba the inssurectional movement.

On a different note, i don't catch whether the intention is to name the swords cased in the Barcelona Montjuic castle as Berber. I know that Don Calvó was himself the documentalist (and director ...) of this museum, which was still open when i have been there (2008?); although not with particular interest to read carefully all captions ... and the pictures i took were a disaster of quality. I regret that my picture of this case also shows unfocused captions, those clearly written in both Castillian and Catalan. Maybe someone with a better equipment can discern further .

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