I first encountered the wonders of Al Andalus on holiday brochures at the age of twelve or thirteen. I distinctly remember a forest of red and white arches in a place called Cordoba. There were the lace-like intricate carvings of another wonder to me, the Alhambra. I knew that one day, I would find out where these arresting buildings were and see them with my own eyes. About twelve years ago, I managed to spend brief spells in Seville, with a flying visit to Cordoba. On another occasion I took on a day trip to the Alhambra and one of the most stunning Pueblos Blancos of the areas, Ronda. Moorish Andalucía had got under my skin, and I felt sure I would return to many, if not all, of these places. This summer allowed me to do just that and experience another city, Cádiz.
Cádiz was where I had chosen to do a two week intensive Spanish course for personal and professional reasons. I knew the city was not big and I wanted to be somewhere manageable and relatively attractive with the opportunity to see the sea. Neither a swimmer nor a sunbather, having to be by a beach has never bothered me but I have always enjoyed seeing the sea. I also remembered descriptions of Cádiz from Byron’s Don Juan...a lively place with plenty of hot scandal and romantic intrigue! Well, modern day Cádiz is ostensibly an elegant place and I can imagine that when Cristobel Colon set sail to the New World, the port subsequently gained in importance and wealth. In the wide main squares, there are plaques commemorating Christian Spain’s links with Latin America. Many of the old town’s streets are narrow and cobbled with historical ‘high rises’ with what looks like personal towers. We learned one afternoon from Eduardo, a retired English teacher from Seville, that these towers were for merchants looking out for the ships coming into harbour. Once they saw a ship coming into port, they would hasten to their place of business to build on their wealth. He was a wonderful ole gentleman who spoke good English and French. I talked to him in French and then he turned to husband and spoke in English. Had we had more time, we would have taken him for a coffee and heard more! It’s extraordinary, how peering into a derelict merchant’s home can lead to such a wealth of knowledge and the acquaintance of a wonderful character.
The apartment we had been allocated was near the theatre, easily accessible to town and ten minutes walk from the school. Indeed, the logistics of this stay would be manageable indeed.
The flat was to be shared with four others and was on the second floor of a 19th century town house. It was spacious but the air circulation in the two bedrooms off the corridors was alarmingly nonexistent! On our first night, we fought against feeling suffocated and barely spelt a wink. I then located a small electric fan in the living room which I purloined for the bedroom and it never left! We were sure we had the hottest room in town!
Speculating who the housemates might be is always an apprehensive affair! I knew before we arrived, there would be an Irish girl, a Malaysian and a Turkish girl. On the night we arrived we met Su Ann, the Malaysian girl. She was tiny alert and cheerful. Kim, tall, svelte and long haired then came out of her room in shorts and night attire to introduce herself. I felt immediately at ease with them both. Husband had nearly killed himself bringing the suitcases up two flights of narrow marbled steps and was in a sweaty condition when he made his salutations!
That night, we dined at the theatre square. It was a Sunday evening and full of families at 11 pm. We had a selection of tapas and enjoyed the local wine. As we looked around, we noticed an alarming amount of overweight folk. We had never noticed this in Andalucía before. We joked this year World’s Fattest Man’s completion must be held in Cádiz. As at the week went on, we noticed there was actually an obesity problem in Cádiz. The tapas of the area are mainly fried (and insanely delicious!) and since the collapse of the shipping industry and the growth in unemployment, weight had gone up, even amongst children, whilst incomes had not. However, there was EU funding for projects and the city still felt well kept.
As for the course itself at Central Melkart, well, it got off to a good start. I was the first to arrive into the room and was followed by a willowy looking blonde who to me looked alarmingly like Gwyneth Paltrow. She turned out to be Eva, a young medic from Bern in Switzerland. She was a bright cookie, with a cool ironic sense of humour. We ended up being together in the ‘intensive’ after group sessions, which was not intensive at all! If anything, I found it so dull and poorly executed that I paid for one to one sessions myself in the second week! However, our morning group classes with Borja were great fun...
In the first week, on the first day, there was Oliver from Germany. A wonderful mild mannered family man who was utterly new to Spanish but kept up with his whizzy iPad! Then there was Erin, a tall dark and handsome German from Bavaria who had great taste in classy shirts and an impressive accent to match. He had an iPhone to help with quick vocab searches! I felt myself to be an anachronism with my verb book and my dictionary. However, by the second week, everyone was reaching for my reference books! The youngest member of the group was a charming young 15 year old French boy called Joseph. By the second week, we were affectionately calling him Joselito! He was indeed dear; an artistic soul living with a Spanish family for four weeks. On the last day, I discovered he spoke quite good English and had as much a passion for the local architecture as I did. We all agreed he had a promising future and I told him to go and win the Sterling Prize for Architecture one day! There were two more members of the group who were pals by the time I arrived in the class. Zbyšek, a handsome and welcoming Czech from Prague who had a useful lap top with him. I could tell from the banter with our young teacher Borja that he had given himself a reputation as the course’s big drinker and lothario. He was no doubt a big drinker and looking as he did, why not make the most of his young handsome years! We became good friends as I often kept him on task in class and joked about his ‘night before’ escapades. As it turned out, he was an intelligent young man who wanted to get into business and start making some money! He did not have a water tight plan for anything, but he showed passion in his ambition. Zbyšek did a four day week as he found coming to class on a Friday after the fiesta of Thursday impossible. I enjoyed our chats and I was touched by him sharing his confidences regarding his latest love. He was indeed a gentle giant who I am sure one day will be an astute and successful business man! As for his pal Dax, well, Dax became the comic element of the class, nay whole school! He was a small Dutchman (very unusual in itself), with wide blue Gollum like eyes and an almost permanent stunned grin. He was allegedly a lighting designer for film, but I’m not entirely sure what type of film. He had done a two week one to one beginner’s course, but his progress had been such that he moved back to the one to one beginner’s course for the next three weeks. Constantly repeating questions in his first lesson with me indicated he was actually struggling with the concept of question and answer! I knew I puzzled him as I said I lived in Egypt but was not Egyptian. His greatest line to me was, ‘Sometimes, Spanish to me is like Chinese!’ I guess in the world of Dax, it would be. I was almost tempted to get husband to regale him in Chinese and then say he was speaking Spanish. Alas the opportunity never arose.
In the second week of the course, we had the pleasure of Stella and Elizabeth joining the group. Stella was a lovely German student whose world was usually 5 mins behind everyone else’s. She took the teasing for that very well. Elizabeth was a cheerful and lively New Yorker who was having a sabbatical from working life to live a little. As a group we worked well. Borja, our teacher, being 28, felt happy to join us socially and taught us with planning and integrity. I liked him very much. He was small and wiry, brown as a nut with a mercurial manner and a gravitas which earned him much deserved respect. I became friends with his delightful and beautiful French girl-friend. It was such a pleasure to chat without thinking how to phrase what I wanted to say!
The second week also saw the moving out of Su Ann and the moving in of the impossibly attractive Austrian Marilis. She was an accomplished Salsa Chica, a singer and musical theatre performer. It was her first time away from home on her own and she came laden with Austrian herbs and a cupboard full of medication. She had clearly been told, Andalucía, being so close to North Africa was dodgy territory! Dodgy actually became the ‘mot de rigueur’ thanks to Su Ann! She claimed she had found ‘dodgy bars ‘and no doubt dodgy owners! Somehow, with the Far Eastern sense for a bargain, she had found the cheapest supermarkets and the cheapest bottles of Sangria. She pretty much continued to semi live at the apartment seeing Kim and Marilis often for evenings out.
Husband and I enjoyed quieter evenings, especially heading out with Eva and Nathan. They made a beautiful couple. He was also a medic and Swiss and they had driven down from Bern together. I commented on our first evening out at the end of the first week how much I liked his printed shirt and from then on...I just wanted to style him! Nathan was a dream to style; tall, slender and a man who knew how to move with grace and ease. He also had beautiful facial features which were clearly an asset. We joked about various wardrobes which would suit him and every time I saw him he was perfectly turned out. He clearly did not need a stylist! Eva too was coolly elegant herself and very self deprecating in manner. They were our kind of couple to befriend and I felt Eva to be a real kindred spirit.
One balmy evening, we all headed to a Flamenco soiree. Husband, myself and our three honorary ‘daughters’, SuAnn, Kim and Marilis were joined by Eva and Nathan. We expected an evening of music, song and dance and ended up sitting through interminable Flamenco singing! We had to wait nearly two hours for the dancing which was fabulous and performed by an exceptionally talented male dancer. He had the posture of a young colt and moved with deftness and precision. The second half returned to more wailing. By the time a Meat Loaf looking man with an 80’s perm took to the stage, we decided to leave, gladly! We worked out that maybe Cádiz was known for is its Flamenco singers in the way Seville is known for Dance.
The second week finished too swiftly. We said our sad farewells to our daughters and newly made friends. We felt we had made friends with Cádiz too. It was a picturesque historical port with much charm and warmth; a place which one day would call us back.
The journey to Cordoba on the train took nearly three hours. We passed many small towns which indeed looked impoverished. The landscape looked parched and not entirely inviting. Andalucía is not heavily populated and is indeed in need of some love and care economically...
Cordoba, the ole Moorish capital, exuded an air of affluence. We hopped into a taxi and were taken to the hotel which ended up being opposite one of the magnificent golden doors of the Mezquita. It was an ideal location and we basked in the cool air condition of the room...I had been to Cordoba on a day trip a decade ago and remembered much of the old quarter. The gardens of the Mezquita were full of orange trees although during the Moorish reign, there had been shady palm trees in the courtyard. The former Jewish quarter with its narrow streets and whitewashed buildings looked as enchanting as ever. I particularly loved the exquisitely kept patios which entered the annual competition in May. These were indeed inviting places, almost like secret gardens beckoning to be discovered. But the jewel in Cordoba’s crown is the Mezquita; a church in the Visigoth period, then a mosque in the 700 year reign of the Moors. No amount of consumed images of the interior will prepare you for the mesmerising forest of arches. My love of Islamic architecture started here, within these infinite forests of red and white arches. I could imagine it in its heyday, with the light flooding in from the outside, the clammer of the merchants of the Judería in stark contrast to the subdued chanting prayers of the Faithfuls. The Byzantine influenced decoration of the Mihrab, with its glistening mosaic work, will keep you spellbound for what feels like an eternity. It is a work of art which almost brings you to your knees in its magnificence and beauty. Even the Christian section of the Church, as intrusive as it seems in the setting, is grand and imposingly impressive but lacks the harmony and the sublime quality of the Mosque sections. To see this complex from the high walls of the Alcázar was indeed a memorable sight.
The ole palace of the Alcázar was in itself a wonderful place of lush gardens and fountains. The harmony of floral design and the tranquil effect of the water, will stay with you a lifetime. At certain points, the scent of thick jasmine bushes makes you want to never leave the place. Imagine on top of this, one balmy evening, a girl playing the violin at the entrance of the Roman Bridge...the sound of music being carried to the doorsteps of the Mezquita. It is hard to leave such a place of magical charm... but leave it we did to marvel at the most beautiful palace complex in Andalucía...The Alhambra.
Our hotel in Granada was a chic affair at the base of the Albacín, the ole Arab quarter of the city. I had never been to the Arab quarter and could not wait to explore it. That first evening there, we ventured to the Mirabel, a look out platform which would give views at sunset over to the Alhambra. As we strolled up the serpentine network of cobbled streets, we were over taken by more zealous types with serious cameras. We knew we were going in the right direction! Once there, there was indeed a throng waiting for the sun to set. When the disc started to make its descent, the palace on the hill was bathed in perfect golden light. The stones seem to shimmer and it was almost impossible to take your eyes off the spot. I took photos like everyone else there...but nothing I saw in the viewfinder compared to what my eyes witnessed. It was not surprising that Ferdinand and Isabella after the Reconquest of Spain chose to reside there, in beauty and in splendour.
On our second night, we went to the Sacromonte area of the city with its cave houses. The gypsies still reside there and perform their own brand of Flamenco called Zambra. The performance takes place in what looks like a cave salon. The audience sit in a circle around the wall of the cave like parlour and the dancing takes place at intimate quarters in the centre of the room. There were copper pots hanging on the walls and even a bed at one end! The pace was fast and the dancing wonderful. The Mamma of the outfit even did her turn but the show stopping dances were performed by three members of what looked like her family. The turns of the male dancer at the end of the show were heart stopping. We also noticed at the performance, two rather odd looking ladies. Well, one looked odd. She had clearly had ‘work done’ on her face, but it had clearly gone wrong. Her lips looked too big for her and the rest of the face did not move. We called them the Two Sisters, Dos Hermanos, thinking maybe unkindly of the Ugly Sisters of Panto fame! We left the venue that evening, giggling and merrily clapping. Olé!
The town of Granada is perhaps the most elegant of the Andalucian cities in its neatness. There is the Arab quarter and the more modern 19 century quarter. The cathedral is an imposing building in the centre of the city and has a square in front of it. It is almost impossible to work out the dimensions of it from the outside. The cafes and restaurants are all chic with swift service. Whatever the charms of the more modern section, the draw to Granada is the Alhambra, the last principality of the Moors.
We spent nearly the whole day in the Palace Complex. It is not a visit to be rushed. We started at the Generalife, the gardens of the summer palace. The arrangements of the courtyard gardens, the water features and fountains are all splendid beyond words. The watery staircase, the Escalera de Agua is one of the most sensuous water arrangements I have ever seen. You can run your hands along the water tables as you climb up and down the steps. Imagine coming to visit the Caliph, reviving your hands and being after a long ride to the palace...it was a place to linger....
The palace itself is so harmoniously perfect in symmetry it delights the mind and the eye. There were no extravagant materials used, so all is in brick, wood and plaster. But oh how they used the wood and the plaster. The carvings are beyond what the eyes can cope with. They have an effect of raising you to heaven and keeping you there. For many moments, I stood almost in a state of suspension. From the balcony leading to Washington Irving’s room where he stayed whilst he was writing ‘Tales from the Alhambra’, you can see all of the Albacín quarter, a cascading trickle of white abodes, neatly packed together like subjects waiting for a royal audience. Once again, I stood on that balcony, only beginning to understand the spell Irving must have fallen under himself. By the time we strolled out of the complex (oh, having spotted our ‘Ugly Sisters’ in the room Dos Hermanos!), we had become subjects to the magic of the Alhambra. That night, we dined at the restaurant overlooking the palace. The meal was fine, and the views unforgettable.
A decade on, Andalucía had lost none of its charm or magic. If anything, for me, it had matured like fine wine; memories of which could always be uncorked at leisure and at will.
