Granada

Granada didn't reveal its charms immediately. Compared to Malaga, everything from the central bus station into town seemed dirtier and poorer. However, as I walked further into the city center and through the Albaicin, a neighborhood leftover from the Muslim Nasrid kingdom, it got immediately more interesting.

The history hides behind corners and leaps out to take you by surprise. While wandering through narrow streets in the medina, I encountered an absolutely massive Catedral de Granada, which happens to be one of the largest cathedrals in Europe. There's no big public square or anything to signify that a significant cathedral is there. It just appears from behind a corner.

I was also fooled by the map a few times. From Google Maps, Sacromonte looked like it must be a few houses scattered on the hill. That's not entirely untrue, but there's also a whole system of caves where the original Gypsy inhabitants (gitanos) invented Flamenco. The performance I attended in one of those caves has been my favorite experience in Spain so far. More on that later.

I finally got the timing right to take a free walking tour, and I'm very glad I did. I got a much better understanding of the historical significance of Granada. When the Catholic Monarchs captured the city from the Nasrid kingdom, they were finally in a position to entertain Columbus's proposal of creating a trade route to India. If the timing were different and Columbus had had other investors, Latin America might all be speaking Dutch.

I'm also grateful to have taken in history in a place that's comfortable with its history. Spain dished out a few centuries of unspeakable violence, yet our tour guide (who was of Ecuadorian heritage) didn't make any woke spectacle of condemning it. No reasonable person feels like the Inquisition was a great idea and a fun time, so why cry about how awful it was hundreds of years later? The historical details are fascinating, but the performative empathy for long ago dead people doesn't do anything for me.

There seems to be an easy acknowledgment here that a lot of crazy things have happened throughout history. While defending Juana la Loca, our guide talked about a Spanish king who wanted to be a frog and could be seen hopping around the castle. Somehow Spain managed. It's harder to get Trump Derangement Syndrome (the emotional meltdown many progressives experience at the mere mention of the 45th president's name) or believe Biden is the Antichrist when you know that your country was once governed by an absolute dictator who wanted to be a frog.

I also wonder how the Spanish would feel about all of the "You Are On Native Land" hats and bumper stickers you see in the US. The Iberian peninsula has had so many rulers and so much conflict that it seems absurd to worry about who the original inhabitants of any area might have been. Descendants of the Nasrid kingdom must identify with the sentiment of many LA Chicanos: "The border crossed us."

I had an interesting conversation with someone at the hostel about the vehicle situation here. He suggested that not only were European cities built over hundreds or thousands of years before cars existed (which is sort of obvious, but it bore repeating), the constant wars in Europe led to city design that benefited locals and confused invaders. Windy and narrow streets are easy to defend but hard to attack. He also pointed out that history influences culture. Europeans living in an old city center are constantly reminded of how the city functioned throughout history. It's a lot easier to get support for an effort to remove cars from the streets when it's obvious that cars have only been a component of the city for a tiny fraction of its existence.

Cars aren't forbidden from the tiny streets in Granada, but they don't look like they'd be a fun way to travel. Watching them navigate through tiny spaces is both terrifying and hilarious. I assume that they're on a long journey and they're only driving through their neighborhood to get onto a more major road.

It's probably a fun city to ride a scooter in. It has the hills and windy cobblestone streets that fuel an American's European scooter fantasy. The scooters that are common here would disappoint many of my friends' wives and girlfriends though. You're expecting this, right?

Although I've dished out a lot of Vespa hate over the years, I've got to admit that that's a sharp looking scooter. I've never had a problem with their looks, though. I've had a problem with the fact that they're three times more expensive than their Japanese counterparts and nowhere near as reliable. When friends have considered buying scooters, I've always encouraged them to look at higher capacity "Maxi" scooters (because anything under 250cc is bound to be miserably slow on American stroads) or if they absolutely need something with cool retro styling at the expense of practical roadworthiness, the Honda Supercub and Honda Metropolitan look great, are priced well, and last forever. What I know now is that even the quaint little European cities I've been touring don't go in for Vespas or retro Japanese bikes. They either go for the dorkiest and most unfashionable Maxi scooters or cheap Chinese scooters with lower capacity.

There are also an abundance of terrific small motorcycles. I'll probably make another post about those when I have a chance to photograph them in another city.

Favorite spots

La Alhambra is an ancient city on the hill in Granada that was conquered from the Nasrid kingdom and built by the earliest Muslim inhabitants of the Iberian peninsula. It's a military fortress, but it also contains a series of palaces, a public square, and now a number of museums and galleries. It's also home to some of the best preserved Muslim architecture in the world. I had supposed that I would get my fill of Muslim architecture in Morocco, so I had only planned to walk around the areas accessible without a ticket. When I got there I realized I probably should have bought the damn ticket, but they were sold out. It's massive and I think it would have been possible to spend four or five hours there. I may have to come back someday.

Alhambra is always visible over the city, and it lights up beautifully at night.

Favorite food

I'm continuing my series of delicious foods that don't photograph well with these Iberian ham shoulder filets from the Plaza de Bib. Maybe I can make up for it with a short video of the beautiful plaza.

Favorite experience

I occasionally read an NPR sob story about some form of indigenous writhing and wailing that has failed to attract any interest among its own people or the outside world and now desperately needs money for the sake of cultural preservation. Flamenco couldn't ever become as mass-marketed as American pop (or K-pop or J-pop for that matter), but there's certainly never going to be a pledge drive to keep it alive.

La Cueva Rocio holds six Flamenco performances every evening and offers a package with a pre-fixe dinner, so I was anticipating kind of a Disneyland experience—not necessarily lacking in quality, but probably lacking in authenticity. The audience consisted of one enormous group of Chinese tourists, one enormous group of old fat German tourists, a small group of Spanish women, and me flying solo. A low cost airline would have drooled over the proximity of seats—we weren't just touching but cuddling. I had low expectations. Absolutely nothing could have prepared me for how incredible Flamenco in a Granada cave was going to be.

The guitarist started the troupe off with a haunting and dark melodic conversation with the cave. The drummer joined. The vocalist howled with visceral pain that lightened up into sweet nostalgia. The four dancers clapped in a row of complex polyrhythms.

The first dancer blew me away. I won't even attempt to be artful about conveying what I witnessed. She would stomp the floor slowly and passionately, then explode in a hurricane of slaps and snaps and twirls and a machine gun of clicks and clacks on the floor. I don't know whether I was witnessing tai chi or tantric sex, but the swelling and exploding, swelling and exploding, was a spectacle unlike anything I've witnessed.

It was an intense performance. It was charged with lust, fear, longing, anger, sadness, and elation. It was animalistic and raw. They sweat. Their costumes ripped apart. They messed up their hair. They grimaced and made faces I've never seen outside of the bedroom. It was highly erotic.

The most impressive thing is that this wasn't some famous act I went to see. These were like dinner theater actors. Or even more like cruise ship entertainers doing their third performance of the day with three more to go. If this is what the B team looks like, I can't even imagine what the A team is like.