The Alhambra

by Glen Strachan

Some older (or perhaps I should say longer established) members of the SIG might remember that I was a fairly regular contributor to VISA some years ago. Since my wife Flora and I spent so many years living in the beautiful mountain city of Oaxaca in southern Mexico - and I did write one piece extolling the virtues of that fabulous part of the world - there was little travelling to write about and so I have been absent from this magazine for a long time.

But life changes and after a distinctly scary encounter with the old Grim Reaper in late 2008 which fortunately was concluded with a temporary reprieve for both of us, we decided to come back to Europe for a while and travel around a continent that was our home for more than forty years before we developed a taste for tropical living. Now based in Spain we are picking off some of our outstanding travel targets in that part of the world and a little beyond.

If there is one place in Europe that demonstrates, at a glance, the history of the southern part of the continent, it is surely the wonderful old walled palace of Alhambra which sits proudly within the city limits of the present day Granada.

For the casual visitor the very pleasant city of Granada - a university city with all of the style that usually implies - is a bonus and, while Alhambra’s position and presence cannot be matched, time in Granada itself can be spent very pleasantly in a modern city which is safe, quite walkable and boasts some interesting shops and restaurants - particularly the ones in the areas that include large Arabic populations and businesses.

Granada is the capital city of the province that bears the same name, situated in Andalusia, Spain, and it offers the contrast of being 750 metres above sea level yet less than an hour’s drive from the coast and a similar distance from the ski resorts of the Sierra Nevada mountains. The waters from the melting snows on these mountains empty into the three rivers that run through Granada - the Darro being the principal and the most attractive of these.

The clear influence of the area’s Islamic heritage is seen in the clever use of water in the architecture of Granada and that adds another dimension to this lovely part of Spain - sheltered as the city is beneath the towering, white peaks of the Sierra Nevada.

In addition to the itinerant Spanish student population, there is a considerable smattering of settlers from various countries of South America. This cosmopolitan mix ensures that Granada - although boasting the usual representation of up-market High Street stores that can be seen in almost any major town or city across Europe - has enough variety around its shopping areas to make it very interesting. I have to admit that the sole reason for our visit to the area was to visit the Moorish citadel of Alhambra, but a huge bonus from the trip was finding the very smart city that we really enjoyed exploring in Granada itself.

And so on to the Alhambra. One of our better decisions was to go online ahead of this trip and book a tour guide and Alhambra entry tickets, which spared us the delay of getting in line outside and hoping that there were still places available for the more heavily subscribed areas of the citadel.
Second only to the remarkable Prado Museum in Madrid as a much-visited cultural site in Spain, the decision has been taken to be very careful with the fabric of the Alhambra. That has led to restrictions being placed on the numbers of visitors allowed into the more sensitive areas of a very old and, in some ways, fragile building with great beauty, at any given time of day.

That visitor package costs a little more than simply going it alone but, while we will re-visit the Citadel in the future on our own, the guide was a tremendous asset to new visitors - a history graduate who spoke to his little group of about twenty English speakers from all over the world - by microphone to our collection of headphones. He had a fund of stories about the history of the palace and was not in the slightest troubled at being somewhat politically incorrect and frank when discussing the ‘dirty little secrets’ of Spain’s ruling classes and the shameful way they conducted themselves in order to try to keep their financial misdemeanours hidden with pogroms in an effort to avoid their creditors. It was difficult to imagine such a frank analysis being delivered in a public place during the years when the dictator Franco and his stifling established church persecuted anything resembling free speech and anybody ‘foolish’ enough to utter these truths. That was also a reminder that while the history of Civil War and Inquisitions might be fading in the minds of today’s younger generation - more occupied by their concerns over living in a country that is shamed by the highest unemployment rates in the European Community - such events have scarred too deeply to be fully extinguished.The Alhambra today is wonderful and any visitor with an interest in art or politics will find it to be a veritable paradise that amply explains why so many countries - my own birthplace included - offer theatres named after it. The Alhambra of yesterday must have been spell-binding in most if not all of its ‘incarnations’.

I little thought, as a youth, when enjoying these Christmas shows in Glasgow’s Alhambra Theatre - while Spain was still labouring under the control of the ruthless dictator Franco – that I would one day be able to savour the delights of the original palace in a free secular democratic Spain - but such is life. Progress is not always something achieved overnight - but it is nonetheless sweet when it does eventually arrive.

Advice if you choose to make a visit yourself is to wear something comfortable on your feet, take a supply of liquids - especially if you visit in summer - and make sure you have plenty of space on your camera. There are few more enticing targets for the photographer.

You will be fascinated by the accounts of how that part of Spain (roughly the bottom left corner of the Spanish map as we cartographers know it!) was fought over by the forces of Ibero, the Greeks, the Eastern Roman Empire, the Jews and the Moors (remarkably fighting in tandem) before it fell to Castile in alliance with the Nasrids. Five hundred and twenty years ago (2 January 1492) the Muslim ruler Muhammad XII surrendered Granada to the fabled Ferdinand II and Queen Isabella I and the Spanish empire building that would eventually bankrupt the monarchy began in earnest.

It is a spine-chilling experience to stand on the very spot where these decisions that had such prodigious repercussions for much of the globe were made. In the rooms of this palace, the funding was put in place and the schedules set for Christopher Columbus to make the explorations that would lead him to sail into the Bahamas, having slightly miscalculated the whereabouts of his intended target, Japan.

While I have tried to give a rather potted version of the features of this remarkable Nasrid palace city, please do not feel that this is simply some dry, bookish trail for historians. Alhambra is so much more than that and very beautiful, too.

If your taste runs to flamenco, it should be added that this part of Spain offers a raw, gypsy version of the dance called zambra. You will be well satisfied with one of the evening shows presented in narrow rooms where you have to be careful as the performers crash their feet down, inches from yours. Even if dance is not your preference, the music from their accompanying singers is worth a visit on its own. These ventures are controlled by long established gypsy families with all the front of house staff, bar tenders etc being retired dancers themselves. This fabulous, unique entertainment should in no way be confused with, or compared to, the rather homogenized form of that dance available in the tourist traps of Madrid.

In short, this was a great trip to start us off on a series of short visits to various Spanish regions and, while the churches which offer sight of the tombs of the Spanish monarchs of the day were rather dull, the Alhambra and the gypsy part of town at night more than sustained our interest.

First published in VISA 101 (Feb 2012)

Beyond the Alhambra (Spain)

By Helen Matthews

I passed through the doorway and was almost overwhelmed by the cloying scent of jasmine and citrus that filled the courtyard. It was a quiet, calm refuge in the centre of the city, and I appeared to have it to myself. Walking round the cloister, I came to the refectory, a simply furnished room with wooden benches, whitewashed walls and a dark wooden ceiling.

Next was the chapter house, in a similar simple style, with just a few paintings adorning the walls. Outside, the paving stones of the cloister were interspersed with memorial tablets to deceased monks, some of them peeping out from beneath aspidistra pots. The sacristy was another simply-furnished room, which did nothing to prepare me for what was to come.

At length I came to the main church of the monastery. I stepped over the threshold and was transported to a different world. It was decorated in breathtaking contrast to the simplicity of the rest of the monastery, with deep ceiling relief, exuberantly painted walls and ceiling and a gilded altarpiece. A recording of baroque music was playing, so I lingered, enjoying the atmosphere.
Outside the monastery the helpful bilingual plaque explained the disconcerting contrasts within. The monastery of San Jerónimo itself had been founded by the Catholic Monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, and given to the Hieronymite order. Later, the Duchess of Sesa had obtained the main chapel to use as a family vault and it was her architects who had wrought the transformation in order to provide more fitting surroundings for the family memorials.

Near the monastery is the hospital of San Juan de Dios. This is another Renaissance building but its courtyard is very different from the austerity of the monastic cloister. It is decorated with colourful wall paintings and ceramic tiles – perhaps how the monastery would have looked if the Duchess’s decorators had been let loose on the whole monastery . The surprise here is that the building is still in use as a working hospital, and its highly decorative courtyard is full of signs directing patients to various clinics.

Later, wandering around the town, I came across a street market at which old coins, stamps and postcards were for sale. At the end of the street was a large open square thronged with people. At first I imagined that this was a continuation of the market, perhaps selling bric à brac or antiques. On closer inspection, I realised that the women were not fighting over bargains but were seated around tables working with their lace pillows and bobbins. Around the edge were stalls selling patterns and equipment. To add to the feeling of unreality, Mickey Mouse was wandering among the tables selling balloons to the children.

In the nearby Plaza Bib Rambla, Winnie the Pooh was selling the balloons and children were also enjoying rides on a roundabout. At first this appeared to be just an ordinary ride for small children. But on closer inspection, the horses, reindeer and dragons they were riding were made out of old rubber tyres, and the roundabout was powered not by a smelly, noisy generator, but by a bespectacled man serenely riding a bicycle. This was Granada’s ‘ecological carousel’.

My visit to Granada had been full of surprises. Of course I visited the obvious sights as well - the Alhambra, the Royal Chapel and the Cathedral, but sometimes the most memorable parts of a trip are the things that you were not expecting.

First published in VISA 83 (Feb 2009)