Epiblogue

Well, I enjoyed all that and a couple of words of appreciation went a long way towards inflating my bonce, so cheers to Bushra, Rezwan and Tora – glad people enjoyed it.

Actually, I was fibbing when I said that Granada was the last place I went to in Andalucia – I did a bit of hill walking up in the Sierra Nevada’s before finally heading back to dear Ol’ Blighty. And the darkly dodgy looking figure, squatting in the foreground, is not a Yeti – it’s just me looking for dead royalty. In the background you can make out Mulhacen Mt., named after, Muley Abul Hassan, the last muslim ruler of Granada to have been born, lived and to have died in al-Andalus. He’s said to be buried up around there… I didn’t find him.

If anyone’s at all inspired to check out Southern Spain then they wouldn’t go too far wrong by starting here – www.andalucia.com – and for some really good reads, around the theme of these blogs, I can recommend, “The Travels of Ibn Battutah” -Tim Mackintosh (Editor), “Leo Africanus” – Amin Maalouf and “Tales of the Alhambra” – Washington Irving.

Granada

Granada was the last Muslim kingdom in Spain, consequently it’s Islamic heritage is the most recent and is still largely intact. This is just as well because it means that Spain, Europe, Islam and the World are not denied a sublime legacy. I left going to Granada till last, both in reality and here – virtually – and if ever I get the chance it’s where I’ll head to first on a return trip to Spain. (Though Torremolinos may come a close second… well, those package deals are cheap.)

Granada’s half way up the Sierra Nevada mountains, making the temperature noticeably cooler than in Seville or the costas but it does mean that you end up doing a bit of hill climbing when you’re out and about being a tourist monkey. Of Andalucia’s many tourist traps, the Alhambra is the daddy of ‘em all… maybe even the Granadaddy!… (okay I won’t do that again). It was, for centuries, the home of the rulers of Granada.

After I’d got myself settled into a dingy but cheap backpacker’s hotel in the middle of Granada, (which is actually quite a diverting city by itself), I planned my assault on the twin peaks. No, nothing to do with David Lynch or Dolly Parton but a reference to the two hills that rise above the city, upon one of which sits the Alhambra and the other, upon which sits the Albaycin quarter.

The first time I went up the Albaycin I used public transport, (cheap, frequent – I’ve ranted about this already so I shan’t again), but if you’re feeling fit, (or stupid like me the second time round), it’s well worth climbing up the dizzying paths winding through this quarter. Incidentally, the Albaycin was, as it’s name clearly suggests, a Muslim quarter but a Muslim quarter that was developed by asylum seekers fleeing other parts of Al-Andalus as they fell to the Christian reconquest. Granada, through a combination of diplomatic skill and luck, managed to remain a Muslim kingdom for centuries after Seville and Cordoba fell.

The Albaycin was the natural place for the city’s rulers to house the refugees as it’s a pain in the neck, (not to mention the calves, knees and butt), to climb everyday but like migrants everywhere these medieval asylum seekers made a success of it and it remains till this day, a stirring testament to the skills and energy that these people brought with them to their new home. (Yeah, I am having a sideways dig here at those in Britain and Europe who are so paranoid about ‘bloody foreigners’ that they fail to see the bigger picture – after all everyone has, somewhere in their family tree, a migrant or asylum seeker amongst their ancestors. Some more recently than others – Ahem!)

So, after the obligatory sketching and photo session from the mirador at the apex of the Albaycin, I tiggered down the giddying alleyways to the bottom of the hill and found a cyber cafe to email off a few messages. Granada is well geared for tourists which means that there’s a thousand and one little shops and hawkers providing tourist services or selling ‘moorish’ trinkets and goods. The irony is that quite a few of these are Muslims but from Morocco – who have spotted a nice little niche, (wheels within wheels, hey?).

I had to book a specific time slot to actually get into the Alhambra, that’s how popular it is. Besides which, I was too tired to do another hill. I shouldn’t have worried though as there’s plenty of buses, (cheap, frequent – blah blah blah!), that take you to the sprawling building complex at the top of the hill.

I don’t know enough superlatives nor do I have an adequate enough vocabulary to describe my feelings and reactions to everything I saw at the Alhambra. These amateur snapshots will have to provide a bare impression of what it’s like – I wish I could have spent a few days in the place but had to settle for six hours. (A note to self – take a packed lunch, bottles of water and extra rolls of film next time).

The history of the Alhambra is better googled elsewhere but I’m not surprised that the American novelist, Washington Irving, was so inspired by the place. I traipsed along the paths, gardens, mazes, halls, courtyards, prisons and balconies imagining a time when they were filled with the loves, lives and intrigues of half a millenia ago.

One thing that I pondered upon is how much the hacienda in ‘High Chaparral’ and ‘Bonanza’ looked like bits of the Alhambra. I guess that shouldn’t be a surprise as after 1492, huge numbers of Andalucians went across to the Americas and no doubt they took with them the skills they’d inherited or copied from the architects and designers of this magnificent place.

The view from within the ‘hacienda’ bit would have been worth the admission price alone. I tried to imagine sitting there in 1400 say, looking out across to the Albaycin, listening to the muezzin call out for maghrib, and watching the people scurrying back home as Aladdinesque oil lamps were being lit in the windows.

Arabic calligraphy is a highly developed art form which is evident in brilliant abundance everywhere in the Alhambra – you’re never far away from a verse from the Qur’an or a hadith in this place. These were all hand crafted – those rulers of Granada may, on occasion, have been at odds with their imams and qadis but they didn’t shirk from their responsibilities as patrons of the Islamic arts.

But there’s more to the Alhambra than just dreamy balconies, there are intricately decorated marble halls, where the Sultans would greet visiting North African or Spanish Ambassadors – they must have been impressed – I was and I’m all the way from Birmingham.

The picture postcard courtyard has to be the Court of the Lions which, as all the brochures show, features a central fountain supported on the backs of four stone lions. It was the stonework colonnade surrounding the fountain that impressed me most. For some reason I went bonkers when I saw it – I had to sit down – it was just too beautiful… plus I was knackered by then.

Granada has a wonderful Muslim past but it’s very much a modern city with modern, mostly Christian, inhabitants who live at ease with their lucrative, non Christian, heritage. Here, as elsewhere, I played my GWIF game, (you know – ‘Guess Where I’m From… I’ve explained it elsewhere), and I have to say I had quite interesting results. The short of it is that most people thought I was a spanish speaker until I opened my mouth. I think that some thought that maybe I was South American but mostly I was taken for being a gitano.

The cultural contribution to Andalucian and Spanish culture by her Gypsy, (or Romani I think they refer to themselves as), minority is significant way beyond their small numbers would suggest should be so. Bullfighting and Flamenco are but two of their contributions but the attitude of conservative Spaniards is rather ambivalent to their fellow countrymen. It’s not surprising that I was taken for a gitano on several occasions, after all Gypsies originally came from northern India and if you look at some flamenco performers they do look a bit Indian(ish). Possibly, I was suffering from traveler’s paranoia but until I opened my gob I did feel that the stares from some hotel managers, shop keepers etc. was a tad wary. Perhaps they had their reasons. I’m somewhat generalising here and should emphasise that 90 percent of the Spaniards I met were very warm, interested and sincere.

(I do go on a bit don’t I? – I think I may take a break from this virtual travel blogging malarkey. I expect I won’t be able to afford a second holiday this year as well so should keep those snapshots and memories in reserve.)

I started this Granada travel blog in the Albaycin and I’ll finish there, (so to speak). The mirador, from where I looked across to the Alhambra, was the location at which, controversially, a new mosque was being built. And where are these Muslims, who are constructing the first mosque to be built in the Albaycin in over 500 years, from?… Spain.

Cordoba

So, I left Seville and embarked on a mini hajj to Spain’s other sites of Islamic significance. Cordoba was my first stop, a smaller town than Seville and it seemed to me, dominated by it’s tourist trade. It sits on the Guadalquivir river and on the way to the main attraction, just before the Roman Bridge, is a huge watermill built by the Moors when the river was know as the Wadi al-Kabir.

The chief tourist attraction in Cordoba is the breathtaking Great Mosque – it’s huge! I walked around the perimeter of it and it took me the best part of an hour… well I was taking it easy; it’s hot in southern Spain! By good fortune, I had accommodation close to the mosque, in the old Jewish quarter and like the Juderia in Seville, the walls along the narrow, winding, cobbled and quaint streets were painted a bright yellow. In fact, not that far away was a statue of Maimonides, or Musa ibn Maymun as he would have been known by his Arab school chums. He lived happily in Cordoba until the Almohads, (al-Muwahhidun), the Taliban of their day, took over and Maimonides had to leg it across the straits of Gibraltar, (gibr al-Tarik), to North Africa, eventually to become court physician to Saladin, (Salah-al-Din Yusuf).

I dug out the requisite amount of pesetas, (yes, it was back in the pre-euro days), and waited in the vast courtyard of the mosque. The queue was long but the shading offered by the canopy of leaves from the palm and lime trees protected us from the worst effects of the Sun.

It was a bit bizarre thinking that the only other times I’ve waited in a queue to enter a mosque was during Eid celebrations. On those occasions, (perhaps a little hypocritically), I usually go to the Birmingham Central Mosque and I consider that to be quite large but it’s dwarfed by the scale of the one in Cordoba.

When you enter, it takes a few moments for your eyes to adjust to the darkness of the interior but when they do you are presented with row upon row of elegant columns, topped by double arches, that seem to stretch out to infinity.

I wandered reverentially, through the cavernous interior, humbled by the brilliance and ingenuity of the people who built this. An obvious comparison can be made between the rows of trees in the courtyard and their petrified equivalents inside. On closer inspection it’s possible to discern that the ‘trunks’ of these stone trees are not uniform. A guidebook revealed that they were actually once Roman pillers… I love it! – it’s that Iberian cultural re-cycling thing again.

Talking of which, after Cordoba fell in 1236, some of the conquerors decided to christianise the mosque. Thankfully, unlike in Seville, it was decided not to tear the place down. Even they had to admit it was too magnificent to do that, some years later however, a somebody had the bright idea to build a cathedral inside it instead. Yes! that’s right!… they built a cathedral inside of the Great Mosque of Cordoba!

If that doesn’t give you an inkling of the vastness of the place then nothing else I say will. It does look completely out of place, slap bang in the middle, as if to affirm the ascendancy of the Christians over the Muslims of Spain. The cathedral seems brutal when compared to the spare elegance of the rest of the place. (But I guess I’m biased)

To be fair, when Emperor Charles V saw what had been done to the mosque, (at his instigation it has to be said), he was appalled and is reputed to have said, “You have destroyed something unique in the world with something that can be found anywhere.“.

In total, I must have spent four hours in the mosque and had to sit down and sketch what I was seeing, not because I’m any good at sketching but I find that it’s a great way of noticing detail. And you really need to notice the detail in Moorish design because the artisans who decorated the mihrab were, perhaps, divinely inspired.

I waited nearly half an hour to catch a glimpse of this as all who entered the mosque gravitated to it’s brilliance and seemed unable to tear themselves away from it once there.

All, that is, except for those resolute souls who had entered a mosque in order to worship in a cathedral!

Bullfight in Seville

Bullfighting is as synonymous a blood sport with Spain as fox hunting is with England. I don’t approve of either but while I was in Seville, curiosity killed the proverbial gatto and one Sunday I got myself a ticket to the modern day amphitheatre that is the Seville bullfighting arena. (I suppose, it was a case of – when in Spain do as the Romans did… sort of – except that bullfighting is actually an even older strand from ancient Med culture)

It was off-season and the crowd largely consisted of curious tourists and die-hard local fans. I was seated in a section that seemed to be mostly full of the former type and if I was the measure of my fellow travellers then we were sitting there like a herd of latter day Hemingways.

Hypocritical chattering gave way to a buzz of excitement as the proceedings began. (I’m not up to scratch with the correct terminology and quite frankly, can’t be bothered to find out, so I may improvise – bullfighting aficionados beware!). The bullfighters walked in formation into the arena and what a colourful troupe of glittery characters they were.

At the head of the stately procession, sauntering across the arena, were the matadors (or maybe they’re called toreadors ?), followed by some portly figures on horse back known as the picadors and bringing up the rear were a bunch of people who looked like cooks… with some horses that looked like they had a plough attached to them.

I was informed that the picadors were former matadors who took on that role as they became older. They were the first to go into action but not before much clapping and appreciation for the spectacle of the torro’s dramatic entrance into the scene, of it’s impending doom. (poor cow… I suppose that should be bull)

Because it was the off-season the bulls, like the matadors, weren’t mature; the protagonists and antagonists in this little tragedy were novices (novidades?). Nevertheless, the bulls were impressive enough. Personally, I would not want to get on the wrong side, (or the right side or in fact any side), of these bovine battleships but the daring bullfighters had other thoughts.

The picadors were equipped with lances, which gave them a slightly surreal, fat Don Quixote look but this is where the bloody business became disconcertingly real. The lances were driven hard into the necks of the bulls while they [the bulls] were charging at the horses. Now, horses are lovely creatures but not very bright – apparently they were blindfolded and clad in huge metal plates. These measures seemed to be enough to persuade them that several tonnes of irate bone and muscle crashing into them was no reason to be alarmed about. The point of the picador’s pointy stick is that it begins the process of weakening the unsuspecting bull.

This process is continued by the next in line to have a go at the brave but doomed bull, the dancing poker boys, (like I said, I don’t know what they’re all called; could be something like bailanderos). Anyway, these guys have long shish kebabs in each hand and there’s three dancing poker boys altogether. They take it in turn to shove these shish kebabs into the bull’s, (by now), alarmingly bloody neck. The die-hard section of the crowd were applauding the finer points of the dancing poker boys‘ antics and after the bull was festooned with as many of the shishs as the lads could jab in, the crowd clapped at some length. We [the tourists] clapped too – it was almost involuntary. I knew what I was witnessing and at some level was becoming appalled by it but I was on an emotional rolercoaster and was abandoning myself to the sensations without trying to think through the significance of the events unfolding before me.

After the dancing poker boys, came the matadors mates who were flourishing the iconic red cape, (except that it was pink), to the crowds’ equally iconic shouts of Ole!. (Some believe this shout could have it’s roots in Spain’s moorish past as it may be a variation on a shout of Allah!). But the show really got going when the chief bull killer entered the stage. By this time the bull was visibly weakened but the proud beast still had enough wrath in it to pose a significant threat to any cocky novice matador.

There were about three sets of bullfights that took place so that the crowd got a chance to see several novices try to make their name. One of whom was, (no point beating about the bush), crap. He was upended by his bull several times and at one stage got booed by the die-harders… hurray for that feisty bull.

A telling point in this whole business, is that when the matador had flourished his cape at the bull to the extent that the tragic creature could do little else but stand exhausted before him, mr. shiny pants was invariably strutting in front of the highest paying seats.

The cleanest kills are made when during one final lunge by the half dead bull, the bull killer plunges a sword, deeply in between it’s shoulder blades and straight into it’s heart.

The bull drops dead.

It is unspeakably tragic.

I suspect that that is what the die-harders like about it.

All of us were on our feet, clapping furiously – for what I don’t know – the bull?, the bull killer?, the cathartic release of our held breaths at witnessing the death of a noble, passionate but doomed creature? I know that all the bravado with which we tourists were deluding ourselves prior to witnessing this tragedy, was forgotten. An english exchange student, seated next to me, summed it up when he said with considered irony – “Now I feel like a man!”

While the crowd’s deafening cheers rang through the arena the cooks raced to the pathetic carcass, harnessed it to the team of horses and contemptuously dragged it around the arena and out of view. To be butchered and sold in the markets nearby. Which I suppose makes it marginally less fucked-up than fox hunting.

And as the glamorous figure of the bull killer performs a lap of honour for his adoring fans, (die-harders pelting him with flowers as he passes by), I couldn’t help but notice that there was blood soaked into his stockings.

It may as well have been on my hands.

Santiponce

A short bus ride out of Seville is a small town going by the slightly unfortunately sounding name of Santiponce. I decided to pop along to it one weekend because I’d heard that it was in ruins… sorry! I meant that there were some ruins there. Actually it’s worth mentioning at this stage that public transport in Spain, (as it had been in France), is excellent – everything is on schedule and it’s cheap. Truth be told, in my experience, this is also the case in Belgium, Portugal and Holland. I’m sure it’s as good, if not better in other parts of Europe too. So why can’t we get it right in Britain? We’re supposed to be the fourth largest economy on the planet and trains were fekin invented here as were double decker buses, timetables, chronometers and even time itself! (I’ve got my angry anorak on)

Anyway, back to Santiponce – so, I got there and there was a feria going on at full swing. That’s the thing about Spain, any excuse to have a party; Spain has one of the largest number of public holidays in Europe… now that’s civilised. So the Santiponce Feria meant that the locals get a chance to dress up, ride horses or in horse drawn carriages, eat, dance and drink… especially drink! Drinking in Spain, I was told, isn’t a matter of quaffing copious amounts of alcohol and crawling into a curry house, there is an etiquette observed whereby to get boraccho, (falling down drunk I think?), isn’t something to be proud of and certainly nothing to brag about. (Big Brother’s Cameron would approve!)

After watching the festivities for a while, I decided that I’d trodden on enough horse poo for one day, so I headed off to the ruins of Italica. This was a thriving town founded by the Romans, well over two thousand years ago and was in fact the birthplace of a couple of Roman Emperors – one of whom was the famous wall builder Hadrian. Walking about the vast ruins makes you realise how advanced Roman civilisation was at it’s peak. Well laid out roads, vast mosaic floored villa’s and lots of plumbing. They liked a good bath did those Romans and when they weren’t scrubbing themselves clean, (or more likely getting some poor slave to do it), they liked to pop along to the local amphitheatre.

And what an amphitheatre the Romans of Italica had. It was one of the largest in the entire Roman Empire and I expect that the poor gladiators marveled at the imposing terraces as they were being chased down by lions, bears or bigger gladiators. While I was in Spain, the Hollywood movie ‘Gladiator’ was still running there. If you remember the film, it featured the exploits of a spanish born Roman general who falls foul of a particularly nasty Emperor and ends up becoming a gladiator. I was told that in Spanish cinemas, the audiences would go wild at the scene in which our protagonist stands up and declares, "Soy Espanol".

Although I didn’t see that movie in Spain, I did get a chance to see the Shaft remake, starring Samuel L Jackson. Now that was a bad movie in english but was improved considerably when dubbed into spanish. If anything Sam (the Man) Jackson sounds even better than usual when he resonantly asks, "Algunas problemas?"

However, some things defy easy translation and the next installment features an aspect of spanish culture that is… well, as controversial as it is spanish, (a free trip to a shop selling porcelain ware if you can guess what it is!).