La Destreza Común: The Original Spanish Fencing School
By Alberto Bomprezzi & Marc Gener
In 1582 Don Jerónimo de Carranza, a cultivated Andalusian noble, devoted Christian and skilful swordsman, publishes in his book “De la Philosphia de las Armas…” a new system for sword combat, developed by himself. This system, completely novel, practical and efficient (as would later on be proven by a large number of fencing masters), used geometry and mathematics as a vehicle to explain fencing concepts with impressive accuracy and precision, and claimed to be, because of its rational nature, universal and absolute. From then on, slowly at the beginning but faster and as time went on, this system that he named “La Verdadera Destreza”, started to gain adepts and to spread widely all over Spain, mainly due to the activity and skill of one of Carranza’s students: Don Luis Pacheco de Narváez, probably the greatest Master of ”La Destreza”. Such was the impact the system made that at a certain point in the other European countries the Spanish fencing School was identified by many exclusively with La Destreza Verdadera.
But then, if Carranza had indeed developed his new system at about the beginning of the second half of the 16th century, the logical question is: what kind of fencing was in practice in Spain before the appearance of La Verdadera Destreza?
We must look for the answer, among other places, in the texts of those who wrote about La Verdadera Destreza, where they use to call it, with intentional contempt, la Destreza Vulgar or Común (Vulgar or Common Destreza). This is the name used by Carranza, Pacheco and their followers to designate both the kind of fencing practised before the rise of La Verdadera Destreza and the style practised by those contemporary fencers of theirs that didn’t follow the principles of their school.
This so-called, also, Esgrima Vulgar or Común (Vulgar or Common Fencing) looks for its first written references to manuals from the end of the 15th century. Thus it is mentioned Jaime Pons, a Master from Majorca who lived and published his treatise in Perpignan, by then under the sovereignty of the Crown of Aragon, in the year of 1474. In the same year, in Seville, appears the treatise of the Master Pedro de la Torre. A few years later, in 1532, the Master Francisco Román, also in Seville, published his treatise “Tratado de Esgrima con figuras”.
The next logical question, then, is: how the Destreza Vulgar was? Even though the old Spanish treatises are indeed lost, the treatises of la Destreza Verdadera describe with a good amount of detail the techniques (called tretas, that could be literally translated as “ruses” or “tricks”) of the Common Fencing School, and talk about it constantly as that natural enemy that has to be defeated. The AEEA has devoted itself to the study and understanding of these techniques with the purpose of reconstructing, as far as possible, the Esgrima Común as it was practised in Spain at the end of the 16th century and through all the 17th century. The conclusions reached so far by our study show that the original Spanish fencing school was, in its core principles, the same than the one practised all over Europe and, in its execution, very similar to the Italian school of the same age (beginning of the 16th century). It has, of course, its own characteristics, as well as a different formal approach and attitude, specially in the tactical side, plus a certain number of techniques we have not seen, so far, in the treatises of the contemporary Italian school. But, as has been said, it essentially follows the same core assumptions and principles. Does it, then, come form the Italian school? No. The unquestionable existence of a formal fencing tradition characteristically Spanish that reaches at least as far back as the 15th c. rather points to both schools sharing a common root and to a mutual influence along time, but they are unmistakably independent from each other.
After the appearance of la Verdadera Destreza, the original Spanish fencing school did not disappear but coexisted for a century and a half with its antagonist, adapting itself not only to sharing the same physical and social space with another school but also to the necessary evolution of fencing dictated by the historical changes, evolving its original techniques and accommodating them to the new circumstances imposed by the passing of time, as might be for example the changes in the morphology of the weapons.
So, as a characteristic element, the implementation of the principles of the Spanish common fencing school for single sword is articulated around the so-called 30 tretas (30 techniques.) These were general techniques from which other, more particular, techniques could be derived. The whole system respected, obviously, the basic fencing principles of time, measure, placement, defence with the point etc.
The 30 Tretas of la Destreza Común for single sword:
1- La Estocada de Puño
2- Cornada
3- Botonazo
4- La Zambullida
5- La Manotada
6- La Estocada a la Mano
7- La Enarcada
8- La Engavilanada
9- La Torneada
10- Remesón y
11- Golpe de Espada
12- Llamar
13- El Quiebro (Desplante)
14- La Final
15- La Garatusa
16- La Ganancia y
17- La Reganancia
18- La tentada
19- El Arrebatar y Tajo
20- El Codazo
21- El Brazal
22- El Canillazo
23- La Treta Doble
24- Tajo Horizontal
25- Revés Horizontal
26- Tajo Ascendente
27- Revés Ascendente
28- La Escampavita
29- La Irremediable
30- La Defendida
For Armas Dobles (Spanish term for two weapons):
Tretas for sword and dagger:
1- La Encadenada
2- Empanada o Cobertera
3- Espinillazo
4- Manotear
5- Encomendada
Tretas for sword and cape
1- Encapar al Enemigo (to put the cape on the enemy)
2- Arrojar la Capa sobre la Espada (to throw the cape on the sword)
Summarising, we can say that:
a) In Spain there were two fencing schools:
- The original fencing school, later called Destreza Vulgar or Común, linked with the mainstream European tradition.
- La Destreza or Verdadera Destreza, that appears in the mid-sixteenth century.
b) The Common Fencing School coexisted with La Destreza Verdadera for 150 years, facing each other both in the practical and in the theoretical fields. And is in the latter where La Verdadera Destreza indisputably gains the upper hand, as is attested by the great number of treatises about this school, among other things, while the Common Fencing School presents only few literary references, and even these mainly through those same Destreza treatises.
c) In spite of the continuous efforts of the Destreza Masters to discredit the Common Fencing School in every possible way, truth is that la Esgrima Común was not a street fighting system fit for the lower social classes, but a complete fencing system with a corpus of well- structured and codified principles and techniques, inheritor of a tradition able to trace its roots back to the Middle Ages.
In short: practically speaking, la Destreza Común is a fully developed and extremely effective rapier combat system.
And is this system, with its principles, techniques, tactical approaches and all the history that surrounds it, including the Masters that practiced it, taught it and made it evolve so it kept being alive and useful at every moment, what AEEA is focusing its efforts in reconstructing, to the best of our abilities.
Even though only few people are working with Spanish fencing I hope this may be of interest at least to some of you.
Published by Alberto Bomprezzi, Technical Director and Head Instructor of the Asociación Española de Esgrima Antigua in the SFI forum in 2005 (source thread)
