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.
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 –
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
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