Ronda and Granada, some Parts of Spain that are not Madrid

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

(part 2 of a series about Spanish cities that are not Madrid)

AS SOME friends know, I am afraid of blood. (And heights. And good-looking women.)

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Now, Ronda is noted for two things: Spain’s oldest bull-ring (i.e., places where matadors stick swords into bulls), and Spain’s steepest cliff-side village.

Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on how you look at it, there were none of my third phobia.

Nonetheless I was dragged there, on the promise of “seeing something different”. And guess what. Ronda is worth seeing (though it is probably better if you are not afraid of blood or heights). This mountain-top locale is one of the oldest inhabited areas in Spain, mainly because it looks easy to defend. Thus, for thousands of years, Spaniards of one stripe or another (Celts, Romans, Visigoths, Moors, and Castilians) have sent villagers down a 100-meter ravine to fetch water from the river. The truth is, though, that each successive group of inhabitants conquered Ronda easily enough, by laying siege and waiting for the village to run out of water.

Few people outside Spain have heard of Ronda, which is not surprising, since the man who made Ronda famous in modern days was Ernest Hemingway, and (in these literature-challenged times) not as many people as you’d think have heard of Ernest Hemingway.

He was this American with a white beard who in his younger days hung out in Ronda to watch bulls getting killed, and then wrote some novels there. A few of his novels were even made into movies, though you have to be ancient to have seen them.

When the bull-ring is closed (as it is six and ¾ days a week, including the day I went), there is little to do in Ronda. Well, let’s be honest: if you are not an aspiring author looking for material, there is nothing to do in Ronda. You walk across the bridge connecting old Ronda with new Ronda, admire the cliff, take a picture (see picture), and then you go home. Guidebooks should tell you useful stuff like this; you’re welcome.

Still, there are not many places like it, and it is worth a detour if you are in the vicinity.

Civilized

From Ronda my companions and I went on to the city of Granada. Granada is actually quite famous, though, again, people tend to get fuzzy even if the name sounds familiar. So here’s the rundown. During the Dark and Middle Ages, for hundreds of years, much of Spain, especially the region of Andalusia, was held by the Moors (guys from Morocco, I guess), whose civilization was the most advanced in Europe in almost every respect. While the English were massacring Scots and Germans were massacring each other, and nobody took a bath more than once a lifetime, Moors in Andalusia had indoor plumbing and were discussing ethics over apple tea. Their culture reached its highest point in a castle and palace complex called The Alhambra, in Granada.

In terms of extent, technical achievement, and sheer aesthetics, the Alhambra ranks in my personal Top 5 Architectural Complexes of the World, along with Peru’s Machu
Picchu, Cambodia’s Angkor Wat, France’s Versailles, and Anaheim’s Disneyland.

The Alhambra is built on a hill towering over the rest of Granada. This means that there is actually no way to get a good overall picture of it (such as those you see on postcards), except by helicopter. So, sorry, I can only show you bits of it at a time.

Here’s the first bit (see picture).

If you are enterprising like me, you will approach on foot from Granada’s downtown, having studied the map and thinking that one kilometer is not so far. You will slowly walk up increasingly steep hills, on increasingly irregular roads that often lead to dead-ends, and get increasingly sweaty. The city map will be totally useless. After getting lost a few times you will start to swear a little, but convince yourself that if you just keep heading higher, sooner or later you will find the entrance. . .
Come to think of it, maybe you should take a taxi.

Anyway, a visit to the Alhambra takes the better part of the day, and is the main reason for coming to Granada in the first place. The Moorish architecture is exquisite, and the use of water for decoration is varied and extensive, making some observers comment that the whole complex is a symphony in water – pools, cascades, fountains, canals, all amazingly fed from the Sierra Nevada mountains a considerable distance away (see picture).

Hot harem?

Like the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, the Alhambra has a harem section. And, like the Topkapi, the Alhambra’s curators are sleeping on the job, because when you go to the harem section it is totally empty, when with a little effort they could have hot models dressed in harem costumes or, better yet, Turkish-bath costumes. This is something that curators of harems and palaces around the world should give serious thought to.

(To be sure, the Alhambra is popular enough, and you should book your entry in advance over the Internet if you don’t want to spend all day waiting in line.)

Towards afternoon, we wandered around the Generalife, which is not an insurance company but a kind of annex to the main complex, with lovely gardens, and is a good place to wind up one’s visit, though a better way is to have a late lunch at the outdoor restaurant just downhill of the main entrance. Don’t expect much from the food or the service; just savor the occasion, and the moment.

A visit to Granada is not like a first-timer’s visit to New York: “We saw the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, rode the Staten Island Ferry, watched a Broadway play, etc., etc.”

A visit to Granada is not an enumeration, it is an Experience, a journey back 800 years to a time when caliphs ruled Spain, and lived what evidently was a very good life, in a very pleasant corner of the world. (Manny Gonzalez, Plantation Bay Resort and Spa)