Granada = Poma-Granade

Granada means pomegranate in Spanish and is the symbol of Granada, even though there aren’t that many actual pomegranate trees in the city. Grenade also comes from the world Granada due to its similar shape and size. I went on a Graffiti art and walking tour and the guide pointed this out to us. The thing is he kept calling the pomegranates, “Poma-grenades.” Thus it is decreed that forevermore (or at least until I forget this little antidote) they shall now always be called this.

I arrived in Granada via bus from Seville and found my hostel in the middle of the Arab souk section of the city. This area is know for its pillowy shisha bars and tea houses that are good places to whittle away an afternoon in.

The area of Spain called the Andalusia is a region that was heavily Moorish for eight hundred years. Granada is the center of that region and was able to hold out against the invading Catholic Church in the 14th and 15th centuries AD while all of its neighboring cities fell. On January 2, 1492 though, the last Muslim in the Iberia, Emir Muhammand XII, signed over the city to King Ferdinand II and Queen Isobel I with the agreement that the Muslim people could continue to live there unmolested in their faith and ways. This treaty held until 1499 when Francisco Jimenez de Cisneros got impatient with the slow conversion of the people of the region and forced conversions or death or expulsions from the area.

As a result of the relatively non-confrontational surrender of the city, the area known as Albayzin, or Arab quarter, was not destroyed and the houses remain intact. This area is an intricate network of narrow step filled streets that wind their way up the hillside to Saint Nicholas Square. The streets are purposely narrow and set at angles to each other to create pockets of shade that cool the region in the 110+ degree summers. All of the houses are painted white and each is behind a wall and a garden. The style of the time was to show your wealth by having the most luxurious garden with the most variety and that hid your house from jealous eyes the best. It’s a neat little area to wander through and the shady streets definitely help block the heat.

At about the same level as Albayzin, but to the east is Sacromonte. This is the gypsy region and is located on Valparaiso Hill. At first the area was inhabited by the poor gypsies that came over after the conquest of the city and lived inside the surrounding defense wall. They dug into the hillside and created cave dwellings. Overtime, the cave houses have gained running water, electricity, frontal façades that look like normal houses, and the area has became quite sought after (although it is mostly still a gypsy area). It is not unusual to wander though the area and happen upon an impromptu Flamenco performance.

On the other side of the defense wall and next to Sacromonte is home of the hippie cave dwellings. This is an area where the current nomads of the area come to live for free in natural caves. The city turns a blind eye to these wanderers and the contently live in their shelters without electricity or running water. It’s said that there are upwards of 800 people living within caves as far as a 2 hour walk back in the Sierra Nevada mountains that surround the city.

The region of Granada is famous for a few different things, the Albayzin as previously mentioned, the Alhambra (yet to be talked about), and maybe not as well known, but nevertheless much sought after, the free tapas. Tapas, meaning “covers” (from the Spanish verb tapar) or “small lids” in Spanish, are small appetizers or amount of foods that are served at bars and in restaurants. There are endless varieties of tapas, but the reason that they’re so great in Granada, is that with the exception of some parts of Madrid, Granada is the only city left in Spain where they’re free with every drink you purchase.

There are a couple of different stories about the origin of free tapas, but the most prevalent is the following. King Alfonso X decided that the peasants weren’t getting fed enough because they didn’t have enough money for food and what money they had they were spending on drink. This was causing problems on many different levels, one being that they were getting drunk (and sick) and the other being that they were malnourished. King Alfonso X decreed that all alcoholic drinks must be served with a morsel of food from then forwards. The idea was that this way the peasants could at least get some sustenance. At the start of this tradition the food given out was typically a piece of bread or some meat on bread. The patrons would use the bread to cover their drinks to keep the flies out (thus the term tapas).

The tradition of only giving out bread had since expanded to many different and delightful choices. Some of the bars in Granada give out small portions of preselected items that they just bring to your table and some places allow you to choose what you want from a list. Usually though, if there’s a big group everyone gets the same tapa, just more of it. So for 2 euro you can essentially get a glass of sangria (so good) with a hamburger and fries for free. For most travelers, that’s a very very good deal. I went out with some friends and had octopus and fried dogfish.

On one of the walking tours that a hitched along with in Granada, I found out that I’d missed out on Flamenco while in Seville (the home of Flamenco in Spain), but that there was a pretty decent show here in town. No one really knows the true origins of Flamenco, but it is often attributed to the gypsies, who practice it today. Flamenco combines cante (singing), toque (guitar playing), dance, and palmas (handclaps). Everything is done with an emotional intensity that makes the audience feel like they are witnessing a heart wrenching confession. In true Flamenco (not the tourist contrived spectacles), much of the performance is improvised and done on the fly.

The performance I went to was set in the origin style. It was in a small bar (the Andalusian Dog) set back into the hillside and made to appear like one of the cave dwellings on Sacromonte. The stage barely contained two musicians, the three singers, and the one dancer (who was amazing). It was a wonderful performance that felt like somewhere between a impromptu hoedown and a depressing opera. This was based on the fact that it seemed as though the musicians, the singers, and the dancer would just kind of nod at each other in a “your turn now” kind of way (nothing set in stone) and then the intensity with which the singing and dancing was done and the facial expressions had you thinking that everything they sang about was related to something horribly tragic.

The last thing of great importance that I did in Granada was go see the Alhambra. The Alhambra was the fortress and royal palace complex built in the 14th century by the Moorish Caliphate. The palace was built for the last Muslim Emirs of the Nasrid dynasty. After the Reconquista (re-conquest) by the Catholic Monarchs in 1492, some portions were reallocated to Christian rulers. King Charles V even had a palace for himself built within the lands of the fortifications.

The Alhambra today contains the Nasrid Palace, King Charles V’s Palace, the Alcazaba (citadel), and many churches and towers, as well as outlying buildings. Attached to the Alhambra is the Generlife, or summer Palace with it immense gardens. The site is an UNESCO World Heritage site and as such only 8100 people are allowed to visit per day, so it’s best to get your tickets in advance. They say that you can see the entire complex in three hours, with breaks, but I found that that’s only if you want to run through the place and not actually get to admire anything. I got lucky when I was there because they were housing a portion of an exhibit on M.C. Escher’s works in King Charles V’s Palace and he’s one of my favorite artists.

And thus that is Granada in a nutshell. On to Madrid, my last Spanish adventure (at these least this trip).