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Read more of our interview with Dr. James Sidaway speaking on Andalucia's connection with the Muslim world.

Now, historically, that sense of connection with the world beyond Europe -- with that Arab, Berber, Islamic world -- remains an important residue within Andalucia and the Andalucian sense of identity and sense of difference. And many Andalucians, I think, would feel that this carries an important message for today's Europe. Andalucia has been historically, they would claim, a place of convivencía, of living together, of different communities -- Jewish, Muslim, Christian, of coexistence.

Now sometimes that coexistence, the historical record proves, was uneasy, and fraught. But, today, many in Andalucia seize on aspects of that history as a positive legacy for a world and for a Europe that is increasingly diverse, that is increasingly having to be a place where different cultures have to get along.

So, in that sense, Andalucia might carry a message for Europe of how Europe can deal with its "others," its immigrants from North Africa and other Muslim countries, and deal with its new neighbors. After all, the boundaries of Europe merge into the Islamic world, in the Balkans, in North Africa. And, in that sense, there is something in the Andaluz history that may seize on this living together, this combination, this hybridity of cultures that carries a positive political and social message for integrating Europe and indeed for a wider world.