SPAIN DIARY 2007 - PART 3 of 3

 

Part 1 of this Diary was posted to Pieces to Share on 11 February, 2023  and Part 2 on 15 February, 2023

 

On the Wednesday, the day after our visit to The Alhambra, we relaxed at Corteja Santa Cecelia, and entertained Sheila to champagne and nibbles at high tea time.  Then, on the Thursday, to Cordoba, about 120 kilometres and two hours away to the north-west. 

With about 320000 inhabitants, Cordoba is larger than Granada, and it is another grand city.  Wide and gracious boulevards, and well-established public gardens with huge trees. 

 We were aiming for the cathedral, and – mindful of the traffic and the likelihood of not being able to park in the heart of the city – we had intended to park on the near side of the river and to walk across the old Roman bridge; but we weren’t alert enough, and were across the river (Rio Guadalquivir) before we knew it ………and straight into a car park, one euro ($1.70) for unlimited time!  We subsequently saw that the Roman bridge was closed for restoration anyway.

While we later did a very long walk, and saw some fine shopping precincts and places of interest, for us the whole point of Cordoba was the cathedral.  It is equally known as the mosque; and, praise be to Allah, the conquering Christians didn’t destroy the mosque – they merely built their cathedral within it. 

 So the Cordoba Mezquita Catedral de Cordoba is this extraordinary construction of heritages and architectural styles.  Building of the mosque commenced in 785, not so long after the Moorish conquest [and not so long after the death of Muhammad in 632], and was massively enlarged on two subsequent occasions.  At its zenith, when the third extension was completed in 960, it was (and architecturally remains, I think) the third biggest mosque in the world.  It had 1293 columns (of many different types of marble and stone, some even cannibalized from Roman ruins), covered 23000 square metres, and was so large that 40000 believers could prostrate themselves within.

Cordoba was re-conquered in 1236 and, although the mosque was then consecrated as a Christian church, there was little alteration until the 1500s when construction of the cathedral within the mosque was begun.  The work took 234 years.  In the process some 437 of the columns were removed, so only 856 of the original 1293 remain.  The Christian structure combines Gothic, Baroque and Romanesque styles, and is fabulous in the real sense of the word. 

 You can regard the despoliation of the old mosque as a travesty; or you can be thankful that so much of it remains.  The buildings co-exist; more’s the pity that the faiths don’t.  I wonder whether the Church has ever  allowed the building to be used for an Islamic service  – there must be some Muslims in Cordoba today, although clearly not 40000 Muslim men. 

 

We shall have to tell Sheila, although we must break the news gently, that we think Corteja Santa Cecilia has a flea problem.  [There were no screens on the windows, and the door from the kitchen to the terrace was always open.  The flies were plentiful but, unlike Australian flies, not interested in hanging around your face.  Blowflies were a rarity, and there were occasional mosquitos.]  Early in the week Annie got a few bites on the arm; but later in the week she had numerous bites on her legs, in particular behind the knees.  Those bites grew into large welts, and drove her mad with itchiness and soreness.  On the terrace there are three cane lounge chairs, with hard cushions; and on arrival Sheila had asked us to stand up the cushions so the cats wouldn’t sleep on them.  There are four timid cats (maybe five) that slink between Nicholas’s place 100 metres away and our place, on the make for food.  We had a huge pot of dry food, and were constantly filling the cat dish, but once replete the cats would disappear.  It’s a fact, is it not, that where there are cats there are fleas.  Not for a moment did we think that there were fleas in the house but, on reflection, our suspicions focus on the cushions on the terrace.  Anyway, it wasn’t until Gandia on the Friday following that Annie was able to get some anti-histamine cream and some relief.

 

In the pharmacy in Gandia we met an English couple.  Jolly souls, broad regional accents; 60ish and presumably retired, because they come to Gandia four or five times a year.  They love it.  They have a place here.  A cheap flight to Valencia, then a 40 minute train trip to Gandia – the train for 10 Euros only!  Everything so much cheaper than at home in the UK, including pharmaceuticals.  We chatted to them (about Australia and New Zealand’s respective defeats in the World Rugby quarter-finals) while they were stocking up on several months’ supply of drugs.  No need for prescriptions.  About 15 boxes, including antibiotics, for 40 euros.  There is clearly massive pharmaceutical price rigging in Australia in which our Government is complicit.  No doubt reinforced by the wretched USA/Australia Free Trade Agreement [into which the Howard Government were conned by the Americans, and in respect of which I wrote imploringly at the time to all 226 Federal Parliamentarians – to no avail, and scant response!].

 

According to the English couple Gandia hasn’t yet been discovered.  As a location it is unknown to travel agents – British travel agents – so most of the tourists here are from within Spain.  This is not to say it’s Sleepy Hollow.  Where we’re staying is actually the port precinct of Gandia.  There are horseshoe-shaped breakwaters and, inside, both a deep-water anchorage and a marina for pleasure craft.  The left-hand arm of the breakwater is huge – half a kilometre long and about 60 feet through.  If you imagine a cross-section from the harbour-side:  first the sloping rock face, then a 10 feet wide walkway, then a roadway, then a huge wall in three sections of varying heights up to 40 feet, then on the Mediterranean side of the wall further rock fill sloping away to the water.  In sheer engineering terms this comprises an almighty pile of stone and masonry.  One interesting feature is that along both water frontages spaced about 20 feet apart are small concrete benches for the fishermen to sit.  And sit they do – dozens of them on the day I strolled along, all with very long fishing rods, more than 30 feet, and none with any evidence of success.

 

For holidaymakers there is a three kilometre white sandy beach, edged by a long promenade, a narrow roadway, and three kilometres of accommodation and shopping.  

Not too glitzy, and not too high-rise – up to 10 storeys.  Our hotel, the Hotel San Luis, is six storeys.  

The Spaniards come out for their evening stroll, from about 6.30 to 8.30 from what we can see.  During the same time many are having light refreshments, drinks and ice creams and so on, but nobody is yet having an evening meal.  That gets under way somewhat later.  Consistent with this practice most shops close for siesta from 2.00 to 5.30, and they stay open till 10.00 at night.  Not many shops open before 10.00 a.m.

 

Gandia proper is three or so kilometres inland from the port, and we spent a pleasant few hours there after a jam-packed bus ride, hilarious to us because everybody seemed to be talking at full pace and at full volume.

 

Gandia is a place quite unknown to us, and not much of a dot on our maps of Spain.  It is a substantial centre though (population 74000) with a long history (Roman ruins under the Gothic church), a sophisticated shopping mall, and a beautiful central boulevard with a 30-foot wide ambulatory within its dual carriageway.  Amble we did.

 

Our journey to Gandia was our longest day on the road.  Sheila Batas had insisted that we were welcome to stay on at Corteja Santa Cecilia, and she refused to take additional rent from friends!  Our official departure time was the Saturday morning, but enjoying the quietness and our time on the hillside so much, we stayed an extra two days.  We set out on the Monday morning, with our only commitment to return the car at Barcelona on the Friday afternoon and to be at our Barcelona hotel that Friday night.  There was no particular objective in the meantime.  The more direct route was via Zaragoza, but this is a very large city and we decided that heading east to the coast then north to Barcelona would likely be more interesting.  

 

One city of some size on the way east from Ermita Nueva was Lorca.  I had thought it might be named after the Spanish poet, Garcia Lorca, but not so.  Lorca (population 93000) has been there at least since Roman times.  We relaxed for two hours: window shopping, a pleasant lunch, and used the internet café to access our in-box.  As usual we couldn’t find any public lavatories, so we went into what we thought was some official building; lots of people coming and going.  In what appeared to be a waiting room there was a disabled cubicle which Annie used without realising that there was a female cubicle beside it, and which I then used because there was no sign of a male lavatory.  Nobody took any notice of us: on reflection we had probably been in the waiting room of a health clinic.  The worst thing to relate is that the cistern wasn’t working, so we weren’t able to flush.  The poor disabled do have to put up with a lot!

 

The scenery during our journey across southern Spain was some of the most spectacular.  Great outcrops of mountains, and wide fertile valleys.  And transition from the olive orchards to market gardens.  Just as amazing as the topography is the human stain spreading like a plague across the landscape.  The closer we came to the coast the more sprawling became the centres of population.  And when we reached the coast, the Costa Blanca coast, we were literally shocked.  What undoubtedly were once small fishing villages are now one seemingly continuous stretch of high-rise real estate exploitation.  The old villages still exist, if only to create traffic jams.  We struggled through a couple of places, despairing of finding the seashore; and we avoided others that  - from the highway - looked totally gross.  Alicante (from the highway) was unbelievable: as many towers as the Gold Coast, including one of about 50 storeys (Alicante population 330000).  In 1987 we had veged out for a few days in the Italian coastal village of Alassio – well not exactly a village (population 10000), but we stayed in a small family-run hotel in the seaport, and it was quiet.   Then eight years ago we stayed for a few days in Comillas, on the northern Basque coast of Spain (population 2000).  Delightful, and also quiet.  Could we find something similar along the Costa Blanca?

 

From our map it didn’t look as though Gandia was on the coast, but there was a nearby coastal resort, so we aimed for that.  We never found it, but we did find Gandia’s port, and found it very pleasing.

 

One thing we never found was the “attractive” Andalusian man.  It’s absurd to generalise, I know.  So I shall.  One time I observed to Sheila Batas that I hadn’t seen much evidence of the phenomenon – noted world-wide, albeit not yet in third world countries – of each generation being taller than the previous.  Because of better nutrition.  I thought Spanish people (Andalusian at least) were surprisingly short, and wondered why there hadn’t been a couple of generational step-ups since the Second World War.  Sheila said the people definitely are getting taller, although I doubted it.  Maybe my judgement is faulty because most of the people we’ve seen [reinforced now in Gandia and Gandia port] were in their 60s and above, and having grown up at the tail end of or just after WW2 they were unlikely to have had the best of nutrition.  However, none of those we saw of later generations seemed to be any taller either.  Even aside from height, the attractive Andalusian man……….well, he doesn’t exist – using Annie’s definition of attractive, and I agree.  The young women, however, are most attractive.  Oscar Wilde said that a woman’s tragedy is that she becomes like her mother and, if this is so, the young women of Spain have a lot to fear.  

 

On our last day at Corteja Santa Cecilia, the Sunday, we had travelled again to Alcala la Real.  Very little was doing, although the men still gathered in the square, and chatted on the seats outside the church (not the church within the fortress on the nearby hill).  Annie wanted another look at the church, the church from which a few days earlier we’d scampered out so as not to get in the way of a wedding; but as we were about to cross the road the church was engulfed in a funeral.  The hearse came around the corner with a couple of hundred people following on foot.  Whether the body had been brought from the undertaker’s or had been lying in the deceased’s home we didn’t know, but the on-foot procession was a lovely tradition.  We watched proceedings from the elevated square across from the church, and then went for a snack.  Annie still wanted to visit the church; and when we returned it was clear that there was about to be a wedding.  Well, we weren’t so diffident this time, and sat in the church through the whole ceremony.  The bride, Mercedes (not pronounced Mer-say-dees, but Mercer-des) was gorgeous in white, and the dinner-suited groom, Antonio, was tall! 

 We were surprised by the casualness of everything even though it was a nuptial mass.  Many guests arrived late, seemingly unconcerned.  At the conclusion some people drifted out to wait for the bride and groom to emerge.  No formal walk down the aisle, no wedding march.  Lots of confetti and rice outside; and bride and groom departed in a horse-drawn carriage.  The most enchanting feature of the entire proceedings – we stayed in the church for the whole of it – was the service.  The mass was sung by a group in red costumes, guitars and about eight singers.  The music sounded very “Spanish”, and we wondered whether it comprised extracts from the Missa Criolla.

Diary concludes

 

Gary Andrews

 

SPAIN DIARY 2007 - PART 2 of 3

 

Part 1 of this Diary was posted to Pieces to Share on  11 February, 2023

 

The next day we visited Granada (population 236000) – not simply Granada, but in particular The Alhambra.  I had always thought that The Alhambra was “a palace”.  Not so, it is a huge complex of fortifications and palaces; overlooking the city.  We had been concerned about the traffic, and how to get there, but Sheila pointed out that the N432 highway to Granada merges with the ring road, and that there is Alhambra signage all the way to the Alhambra exit – and then up the hill right into the Alhambra car park.  Although only about 50 kilometres, in the morning peak it took us about two hours door to door.  There was ample parking space, certainly early in the day – and the transport situation generally was very good: in addition to the big private car park there was space for the tourist busses to turn around and to drop their tour groups right at the entrance; and nearby the little red busses run their shuttle service down to the city.  But the admission situation is chaotic.  Despite the large and modern gateway complex the visitor without a tourist guide is left floundering.  There are uncontrolled queues everywhere, and insufficient signage and attendants to unscramble the uncertainty.  On advice we had phoned ahead, and booked our tickets several days before.  Very efficient that was.  We provided name and credit card numbers, and in return our arrival time was confirmed (8.30), and our entrance time into the Nazaries Palace (between 12.00 and 12.30, or forget it!); and we’d been given a reference number and been told to bring the passport corresponding with the credit card holder.  We had been forewarned that on arrival we would queue to collect the tickets, quoting the reference, and showing the passport.  Not so.  The queue we got into was for those who had pre-booked, but over the internet.  No harm done though, for we were soon re-directed to an area with banks of vending machines.  No need for the passport, we simply had to insert the credit card – if we had it with us! – and the tickets emerged. 

 Then through the gate, with the barcodes on our tickets being manually read, only to notice other visitors with audio guides held to their ears.   Where the hell do you get those?  Vital for visitors not travelling in a group.  Well you get them from the booth just outside the gate, tucked behind the ticket boxes, and completely lost in the throng of people.  The man on the gate seemed quite unperturbed, and let us go back and collect headsets, but this sort of back-tracking must be going on all day.  The set-up is ridiculously inefficient; if the audio pick-up spot were prominently placed before the ticket queues not only would they avoid annoying the tourists, but they would get many more customers.  The idiocy of the arrangement was re-confirmed later in the day when we’d concluded our visit.  You leave a deposit as surety for the headphones – a credit card or 50 euros – in an envelope numbered to correspond with your audiophone ticket, and on which you write your name.  So you have to come back to the booth, not only to return the audiophone but also to retrieve your deposit – and, would you believe, the drop-off queue is the same as the collect queue; so we had to line up with the new influx of visitors before we could escape.  And the escape itself was also chaotic, because there was no exit door, and we had to push our way through the crowds coming in.  Here endeth the rave!

The Alhambra enforces a limit on visitor numbers, 6000 every day only – that’s why we rang ahead to insure our places.  Over two million visitors a year.  Sheila says that Granada city (as opposed to The Alhambra) is missing out on all that tourist potential, simply because there are not enough hotel rooms.  Logistically there would need to be 6000 beds or thereabouts.  So what happens is that Granada is typically in the “day visit” category of conducted tours – people are bussed into Granada, visit The Alhambra, and are bussed on to some other centre for the night.   So they fail to see all the other wonderful attractions of Granada, and Granada forfeits their tourist dollars.

 

And there certainly are things to see in Granada, it’s a very fine city.  Three days later, on the Friday, we went to Granada again.  Once more, taking the easy way out, we parked at The Alhambra; and we took the little red bus down to the centre of town.  We weren’t so early this time, our objective being to visit the cathedral, and to meet Sheila for lunch at 12.30.  

 

One doesn’t have to be a student of church architecture to appreciate that the Granada cathedral is a monumental structure.  Lonely Planet describes it as cavernous. 

 Construction commenced in 1505 and, so the guidebooks say, its construction straddled the transition from the Gothic to the Renaissance periods; and a change of architect led to a change in design.  With five naves it is considered to be “the most important Renaissance building in Spain”.  In contrast to the Gothic cathedrals we’ve seen (and possibly in contrast to the Renaissance ones too) this church is full of light.  There are high-up windows everywhere,

 and the lightness is enhanced by the fact that the massive pillars and the walls are whitewashed. 

 There are numerous grossly-overdecorated side altars, 

but the gob-smacking feature of the building is the main chapel (capella mayor), and altarpiece, semi-circular and rising to more than 30 metres. 

 Oh, and don’t forget the double organs, each of them between pillars in the naves; and because they are not against the side walls they each have two sets of ornamental pipes – front and back.  If any composer in history ever wrote a piece for two pipe organs I do hope that he or she got to hear it played in Granada cathedral.  And there is a collection of huge sacred texts, displayed in glass cases, but standing upright with the pages sagging; and Annie was very concerned at the apparent disdain for their value and their conservation. 

 It is not fitting to dwell on the poverty that must have co-existed with the massive expenditure and effort on the glorification of God, or to dwell on the sheer bad taste of it all; suffice to accept it as an extraordinary human achievement, and to marvel.

Adjacent to the cathedral is the Royal Chapel (Capella Real),

containing a museum with many old masters, Botticelli for instance, and containing the bodies (in lead coffins) and monuments in marble to Ferdinand and Isabella, the monarchs who sponsored Columbus and the opening up of the New World. Outside, two or three drab beggars were contrasting with colourful mummers, gaily costumed, on pedestals, and performing for the tourists.

The streets of Granada (in the parts we saw) are splendid. 

 Small alleyways and arcades, not so narrow perhaps as in Morocco but not so smelly either – not smelly at all; and fine boulevards.  And squares, and fountains.  We met Sheila, as planned, in one of the squares.  Her wish was to have us sample some authentic Spanish cuisine, and she had in mind a tiny restaurant, Los Diamantes.  They don’t open until around 1.00, but if you don’t get there by 12.30 you’ll likely not get a seat!  There are three or four tables only, most locals preferring to stand while they eat.  And how to be seated by 12.30 if the establishment doesn’t open till 1.00? – why, from the back lane, and through the kitchen, of course!  Indeed, there were a number of people, like us, who were seated and eating before the shutter was thrown up.  Soon there were twenty or so standing at the bar, passing drinks and plates of food to those bunched behind.

 

We had a local refreshing drink, “summer wine” (tinto de verano), which is a light red wine from a cask, served over ice, to which you add lemon soft drink or lemonade.  Sounds odd to us, but it was rather pleasant.  Some of those at the bar were drinking beer, which was available on tap.  Our summer wine was served with tapas – plates of light snacks, similar in concept to our hors d’oeuvres. 

 The tapas with our first round of drinks was a plate of black tomatoes, quartered and lying in a deep drizzle of olive oil.  Sprinkle with rock salt, and enjoy.  Delicious!  Sheila said that black tomatoes are something of a speciality at Los Diamantes, and that she’s not seen them served anywhere else.  The tapas with our second round of drinks was a plate of prawns.  The restaurant specializes in seafood, but in deference to Annie and Gary’s unadventurous palates Sheila ordered a main course of lamb chops – long boned, no more than a centimetre thick, well cooked in oil, and wonderful.  Served with French fries.  Our entree had been a large plate of seafood – prawns, whitebait, squid, small bits of fish, and who knows what else, each morsel deep fried in batter; and, we had to agree, quite scrummy.

 

After lunch Annie and Sheila (with Gary in tow) prowled the ground floor cosmetic section of a department store, searching for lipstick and finding it.  Gary browsed through the large book department, but couldn’t find a single English-language publication.  Then on to have coffee at Sheila’s city apartment.  She has had her place in Granada for seven or eight years.  It is one of half-a-dozen apartments developed within an old building, in a fashionable part of town, right under the walls of The Alhambra. 

 The day-time views of the walls and towers from Sheila’s living room and bedroom are spectacular enough, but Sheila says that, with all the floodlighting, the night-time views are magic.

 

By the time we left Sheila it was 4.30, and we chose not to go on the city tour bus.  Open topped, double decker: over the years it’s been a rule with us to take the tourist bus and see the main tourist attractions in one hit, even if only in passing and from the outside.  The Granada tour lasts about 1½ hours, and we didn’t want to get back to Ermita Nueva too close to dark – so next time!  The little red bus up to The Alhambra car park and on our way, with a look of superiority at the few still entering The Alhambra at that time of day.

 

I must say I was a little disappointed in The Alhambra; or, rather, I was least impressed with the part supposed to be most admirable, and more impressed with the supposedly less important.  The place certainly has much of interest – there are 48 stopping points in the audio guide, and more than half a day is required for a leisurely but purposeful exploration.  We had heard plenty in Morocco about the Moorish invasion of Spain in the year 711 – when about 10000 men, mostly Berber, arrived in Gibraltar from Tangier – and the general taking over from the Visigoths; and in Spain we were now seeing it from the receiving end so to speak.  The Moors (the word derives from Moslem) and their Islamic religion were to dominate the Iberian Peninsula for nearly four centuries and to have a strong influence for another four.  Their name for the Iberian Peninsula was Al-Andalus, hence Andalucia.  The stronghold of Islamic political power and culture was initially Cordoba, then Seville, and later Granada.  While the hill on which The Alhambra sits had been inhabited probably since pre-Roman times, it wasn’t until the Christian re-conquest of Cordoba in 1236 and Seville in 1248, and the rise of a new ruling Muslim dynasty – the Nasrids – that Granada arose as “the last Islamic state in the Iberian Peninsula”.  The Nasrids – called sultans in the Spanish guidebooks but kings by our guide in Morocco – reigned from 1232 to 1492, the very year that Ferdinand and Isabella sent Columbus from Barcelona to “sail the ocean blue”. 

 

At one end of The Alhambra is the Alcazaba, the citadel, really a separate fortified area within the walls.  It has some Moorish and some Christian history, and is very impressive.  There are the walls themselves, and the filled-in moats; and, at the opposite end of the complex, the Generalife.  Outside the walls, and up an adjacent slope, the Generalife was the rural retreat of the sultan – a separate palace, with extensive patios and gardens.  Numerous high and narrow hedges.  A lovely feature is the Water Stairway (Escalera del Agua) – a set of steps, with three circular landings, and water running down open channels set into the side walls of the staircase.  Water is everywhere in the Generalife, a tribute not to the barren hills but to the town planning that brought the endless supply via the Acequia Real (Royal Aqueduct). 

 

In the large area between the Alcazaba and the Generalife there are, within the walls, vast well-kept gardens,

a number of Moorish palaces (collectively the Nasrid Palaces), the church of Santa Maria, the palace of the Christian king, Charles V, numerous shops and private residences, and even a couple of hotels.  The church replaced a demolished mosque, but fortunately the sultans’ palaces have survived.  In all, The Alhambra is a bit of a shemozzle, but what a shemozzle! 

The Nasrid palaces undoubtedly typify Moorish architecture and building at its best, and the stucco, tile-work, and woodwork, is brilliant –

but we had seen ten days of it in Morocco; and, to us, the high point of The Alhambra was the Charles V Palace (Palacis de Carlos V, or Los Placetas).  From the guidebook:  “The presence of a renaissance palace in the heart of The Alhambra……….never fails to surprise by its radical and almost arrogant rupture with the pre-existing architecture and surroundings.”  A bit overblown, but you get the idea – it stands out like a sore thumb.  The Charles V palace is square, 63 metres (207 feet) long on each side.  But the amazing feature is that it’s open in the centre – a huge plaza surrounded by a circular colonnade of 32 columns, with an overlooking first floor gallery – a circle within a square, the symbols of earth and heaven. 

 Construction commenced in 1526, and work continued to 1568 and then stopped.  There was no roof, and the Palace was never occupied.  Work re-commenced in 1923, the roof has been finished, but the project continues still.  Such a majestic building and, for me, the highpoint of The Alhambra visit.

 

To be continued……….

 

Gary Andrews