Christine and Keith's Travels: Granada, Spain, Friday December 12th

It was no surprise that we slept in – all these late nights emailing take their toll. Today was to be our big tourist day.

As with the rest of Spain, Granada was a Roman settlement which was taken over by the Visigoths. Muslim forces, allied with Jews who lived in Granada, took over in 711. When the Christian monarchs were conquering other cities such as Cordoba, the Muslims fled to Granada which was an independent Emirate under Mohammed ibn Yusuf ibn Nasr. The Emirate was quite large, from Gibraltar in the west to the east of Almeria, and the Nasrid Emirate had ruled from the Alhambra Palace for 250 years. Granada was a very rich medieval city as well as one with high levels of artistic and scientific attainment. This started to decline during the fifteenth century, with economic downturns and rivalry over the succession. It is confusing because the rivals were the Emir (supported by his harem favourite) and Baoabdil (his son by his wife). Finally a civil war in 1482 started by Baoabdil weakened the Emirate. The Christian armies took advantage of this weak moment and invaded ruthlessly. In 1491 they laid siege to the city of Granada and after eight months Baoabdil surrendered after agreeing to a treaty. The deal was that he would surrender the city but would get the Alpujarras valleys and 30,000 gold coins, and his subjects would have religious and political freedom. It is amazing that he had any bargaining chips at all, given that his whole Emirate had been conquered well and truly, let alone ones that included a payoff for him. It seems that Isabel and Fernando may have learnt a thing or two by this stage of their long waged conquering, about how difficult it is to run cities if you drive out all the occupants and then you have to immediately find Christians to fill them up so that you don’t lose them again. In this case, in 1492 the Catholic Monarchs entered Granada in a ceremonial manner, wearing Muslim dress, clearly a show of respect for the traditions of the inhabitants, or at least a show to make the inhabitants believe in that respect. It wasn’t long before the dress-ups were revealed for what they were, with the Jews being expelled from Spain pretty well pronto and persecution of Muslims in all areas being the norm. Muslims were finally driven out of Spain in the 17^th Century, and with the loss of so many talented and long term members of the community, Granada declined as a city from then on. It was only in the 1830s, with the advent of the Romantic period in art and literature, that Granada’s Islamic heritage was appreciated and restoration works began, along with small scale tourism. During the Civil War the Nationalists took over Granada and killed anyone with left wing leanings or connections, which amounted to 4000 people including the poet Federico Garcia Lorca.

It was absolutely freezing. We zipped into town, entering a tent in the square behind the Cathedral where the town belén was on display. Surely belén making is Spain’s answer to miniature railway making in Britain, but of course it has a lot more scope and less problems with electricity and timetabling of transport. The scale can be a bit bigger too.

We were diverted for a moment watching the same ‘give some herbs, tell a fortune, ask for money’ routine by women who were clones or very close relatives of the ladies doing it in Seville. The Cathedral entrance was off to the side. The man who let us in directed us into a room that was really out of bounds due to renovations. Or perhaps I interpreted his wave of the arm as meaning go into that room over there and up those steps. Whatever the case, we were in there stepping over electrical leads and looking around in the presence of the workmen for quite some time. There were large mirrors on the walls, which seemed remarkable to us in a religious room.

It was like a gallery with magnificent paintings on the walls. The room was surrounded with cabinets with many drawers in them. At one point the door was shut, with us inside, so that the workman could attend to a corner. Shortly after that a nun came in, and surprised to see us, she explained that the room was under renovation and out of bounds. She, and a team of helpers, were taking the paintings off the walls and carting them off somewhere for safe keeping. I thought that it would have been easy to assist, given the right costume, Spanish looks and language, and really to have been an international art thief. Priceless artworks were just leaning against walls waiting to be collected. The only one with any authority there seemed to be the diminutive nun who couldn’t see anything because of the size of the painting she was carrying.

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We had nowhere to go but into the Cathedral, so in we went. It was enormous, with beautiful chapels, like quite separate rooms, around the sides. Paintings were very much a part of this building, with flat surfaces low down looking as if they were added for the purpose of displaying them well.

The Cathedral was ornate but not overdone, and with its simple checkerboard black and white marble floor, really rather like a palace. Huge white columns were offset by delicate gold carvings, like the most opulent yet refined writing paper. Enormous books with illuminated music in them were on display. The main altar piece was spectacular, set in a semicircle and like the décor of an opera house above a magnificent gallery of religious paintings.

On one side a carving of Queen Isabella, kneeling in prayer and on the other side her husband, King Ferdinand was also carved praying. The organ was ornate and like a beautifully decorated wedding cake – nothing looked run down and the various elements came together well to create a sense of unity and intended design. This is often hard to achieve in a church which has evolved over centuries and which usually bears the mark of the different eras, tastes and priorities that have contributed to it.

When we came outside we could hear chanting and a voice over a loud hailer reading out something serious. We hurried along to see what was happening. A large crowd of students was protesting the killing by the Greek police of a youth – a situation that Rohan had mentioned to us but which we had not heard the details of. The students were making a stand of solidarity with their counterparts in Greece who are protesting against the police tactics in this instance. Apparently there are riots in Greece at the moment in reaction to the death. A young man asked Keith not to take photos of the students and a dog on the protest reinforced this request by barking and rushing at Keith’s leg when he was trying to take a photo of the protest banner. We were amused to see that, as two o’clock and siesta hour approached, the banners came down and the protestors went home, presumably to lunch and a sleep. Of course that was sensible, given that there is not much point in protesting in a deserted street, with not even the police across the road still there to hear you, but it was amusing to us to think of a protest obeying the siesta rules. Would a war stop at two and resume at five also?

Tuned in now to thinking that it was siesta time, we decided to go home and have some lunch and a sleep. Taking a new route, we passed a school just as all the students were coming out. Most primary aged children were met by an adult or older sibling, with many grandparents doing that task as well. Young children pull their school bags along on wheels, with only a few carrying them on their backs.

We felt more refreshed and ready to visit the Chapel Royal when we woke.

This chapel used to be joined to the Cathedral but is now separate. It is the final resting place of the Catholic Monarchs, Isabella and Ferdinand, their daughter Juana ‘the Mad’ and her husband Philip ‘the Handsome,’ and Miguel, the eldest grandson of the Catholic Monarchs. The coffins are below floor level, and above them are the elaborate tombs with depictions of each of the couples on top, as if sleeping. It is so high that it is very hard to see their faces, but they have been sculpted as individuals. Poor Juana, looks like a very ordinary woman, whose life as a princess and queen must have been bewildering to her. She was a pawn in the royal game of alliances and would never have had any life of her own. She was said to have been mad, and from a young age, so Philip the Handsome was probably equally a pawn when it came to marriage for political alliances. Philip was higher in status than his parents-in-law because he was the son of the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, Maximillian, so his sculpture, and that of his wife, are placed higher than theirs. Even in death, care must be taken with precedence, just as at the dinner table or in a procession.

There is an amazing altar piece, with many carved figures on it as well as different stages in the life of Jesus. Many saints are depicted – so many that there was a chart to tell you who was who. One poor saint was depicted being boiled alive, sitting up straight in a cauldron. Ferdinand and Isabella are shown at each side praying, with graphic and gruesome scenes of the defeat of the Muslims reminding viewers of their achievements, below them.

To the side of the chapel there were more fine sculptures of Isabella and Ferdinand and four portraits without names and I wondered if they were the four children of Isabella and Ferdinand. I went back and looked closely at the sculpture of Juana and then again at the paintings, and perhaps one was her before everything went haywire, or perhaps it was her painted to please her parents or to promote her as a marriage prospect. It was very frustrating not to know, but chapels are not museums so it was lucky to have had the saints chart to identify each one.

When we came out, we went in search of some little gifts for my sisters and their families, looking in all the shops in the market area around the cathedral. We had a few cards to send, so Keith went back to the hotel for our address book and I set up camp in the post office. I wrote letters in French, letters in English and wrapped presents in tourist magazine pages. By the time Keith returned, having got lost and taken a big detour via the river, I was part of the furniture. As in Greece, it is the post office staff who package your goods for postage, and then off you go to have them weighed and to pay. It was after closing time when we finished, and a boy who came in to speak to the man serving us told us that the sale’s assistant was the ‘allegrio de la casa’. He explained that that meant he was the best, always thinking of others, and the ‘happiness in the house.’ The face of the man serving us was wreathed in smiles, and his day had been wonderfully enhanced by his young friend’s generous praise. In fact, we and everyone who had heard were smiling too.

We walked home in gently falling rain, with only a steady pace keeping us warm. The supermarket was closed and, being unsure of finding bread anywhere and needing food for tea, breakfast and a picnic for the next day, we settled for buying six Madeline cakes just in case. Of course then we came to a small shop with bread so we bought some of that too, so we were set. After tea, we got straight into bed in all our clothes to keep warm, and only changed after we had defrosted. Keith was still hopeful of solving our computer problems and worked on long after I, complaining that I didn’t have a book to read, had gone to sleep.