QuinnRoads

GOING OUT ON THE TOWN

Or

Music Is Where You Find It

Although we have attended a few concerts, we've seen very little cafe or club entertainment. There's music going on every night - there are flyers and posters all over - but even after more than three months, we haven't completely adjusted to Spanish time. We eat lunch and dinner later, and enjoy siesta, but night begins a lot later here, at least in regards to going out on the town.
According to the flyers, the music usually begins at ten. This, we understand, really means ten-thirty. An eleven o'clock (yes friends, that is PM) start time is not unusual. At the jazz/flamenco club down the street - where you think I'd be several nights a week - the shows often begin at midnight. This cellar club is also far too smoky for Kay to even consider. There's also a jazz club/cafe near the university that featured local groups (jazz seems to be relatively popular here). We checked it out during the early evening and it, too, was very smoky. We've yet to drag ourselves over for their ten o'clock show.
We did hear a flamenco guitarist play at a Moroccan teahouse in the neighborhood. The poster said that the music would begin at ten. We got there at 9:45, took a perfect table, moved once because of smoke, then waited, along with four other people, for an hour. At ten-thirty people began streaming in. The music began at 10:45. Did they know something I didn't?
Last week we saw a tango group in a small, basement theater. The poster said "a patir de los 20 h," an unheard of starting time of 8 p.m. We were there a bit before eight and the show began at 8:20. The music was terrific and we were awake at the end.
We do hear a good deal of free music (free if you don't put anything in the hat) in the plazas and on the streets. Any outdoor cafe with eight tables or more will have a constantly changing show of strolling minstrels. They're never overbearing, rarely playing more than three songs before moving on, and seem to be quite happy with any coins you toss in the hat. On the larger plazas you'll sometimes find jugglers and clowns. In the pedestrian shopping areas, musicians simply take up a spot and play for the passersby.
We walk a lot and probably pass through every downtown plaza and walking street several times a week. Some entertainers we continue to see week after week, others come and then suddenly disappear, most likely off to another city and a new audience. There are a number of regulars, a Chinese man who plays a stringed Chinese folk instrument and a singing guitarist who wears a funny turned-down hat and specializes in Beatles songs (Norwegian Woods seems to be his favorite), although he seems to speak only Spanish. We've also heard a perky young woman, accompanied by a guitarist, sing American jazz/pop songs in an almost perfect American accent. She even scatted pretty well. They too seem to speak only Spanish. Apparently they learn the songs phonetically.
Another duo we've heard more than once is a gypsy guitarist-singer whose accompanist plays a Flamenco box, an instrument, I assume, unique to Flamenco music. The wooden box, which the musician sits on and plays with open hands, is about 18 inches high with sound holes like a guitar's in the back. I don't know what's inside, but different sounds are produced from different areas of the box. One corner, for example, sounds like a tambourine. They're sold in music stores for $100-200. I checked it out.
During the holidays, we were hearing, it seemed several times a day, a sax and guitar duet playing jazzy, Eastern European-sounding music. Flannery heard them talking and thought that they were from Czechoslovakia. For two nights they played right under our windows, Calle Elvira being a major pedestrian thoroughfare. The first night they were joined by a girl who danced and swirled in the street, the second night by a wandering drummer.
Recently we came across a jazz duo playing beneath one of the old city gates high in the Albayzin. The corner of the "L" shaped gate had a domed, 30-foot ceiling which produced a wonderful, rich sound. The saxophonist was Irish, the bassist German. They, like the Czech group, were quite good.
A few days ago, January 24th, Kay and I were sitting in a cafe by the river, soaking up the sun over a beer and tapas, when a young, bearded guitarist approached our cafe tables. The tables occupy a long stretch between the street and the river wall. The actual cafes - there are at least four, each with its own set of tables - are across the street, and the waiters run back and forth from cafe to tables with food and drink.
DIGRESSION: All over the city, wherever there's room enough for three tables or more, you'll find an outdoor cafe. Granada's narrow streets and winding lanes rarely meet at right angles, leaving small, oddly shaped intersections. You may pass one of these empty spaces everyday, then one sunny Sunday you walk by and there are four tables occupied by people enjoying a glass of beer and a ham sandwich. Or a small restaurant you've never noticed suddenly sprouts tables, chairs and umbrellas. I have the feeling that all over Granada thousands of tables and umbrellas and tens of thousands of chairs are stacked away under stairways and in storage rooms in anticipation of spring, when, on one particularly warm weekend, the entire city will become an enormous outdoor cafe. Equally puzzling is that some of these cafes, even those on a plaza, have no obvious source of food and drink. It is only by watching the waiters racing to and fro that you discover that your food is coming from a cafe across the plaza or perhaps through a door down the street. END OF DIGRESSION
Anyway, before the guitarist had a chance to begin, his guitar was borrowed by a Gypsy sitting two tables away from us, who commenced to play Flamenco. The guitarist exchanged a few comments with the Gypsy, retrieved his guitar, played a few Flamenco licks, then sang an American pop song, followed by Ellington's "Take the A Train," and a blues piece.
Then he passed the hat. When he reached us, we asked him if he spoke English. He sounded American but you never know. As it turned out, he was from Alaska and living in Granada till March in order to study Flamenco guitar. He asked us to come to the club where he is playing; the music, he said, ranged from bluegrass to jazz.
Among the musicians we continue to hear around town are a Flamenco guitarist/singer; a teenager who plays a small, stringed, xylophone-like instrument with mallets; a group of Peruvians in full regalia who play Andean flutes with recorded background; and two accordion players, one around nine years old, the other probably 70. There are also a few "human statues," one of who is excellent. There are no mimes.
Free tapas and free entertainment, all for the price of a drink. As my brother-in-law says, "It doesn't get any better than this."

A very, very, very short history
of
The Moorish Occupation, La Reconquista,
The Inquisition and Our Neighborhood

MOORISH OCCUPATION
In 711, Iberia was invaded by a small army of Arabs, Berbers and Syrians. The Christian Visigoths, who had ruled Spain for nearly 300 years after 700 years of Roman domination, put up little resistance. Unlike the current British/German invasion, which has been content to occupy the coast, the armies moved north and soon most of the peninsula paid allegiance to the caliphate of Damascus. They made their capital in C—rdoba. Under Moorish rule the country prospered, and by the 10th century, Spain was considered the wealthiest and most cultivated country in the world. Their universities and libraries drew scholars from all over Europe.

LA RECONQUISTA
Although the Spanish did not take this lying down, they did get up very slowly. From their first victory in 718, to the final one in 1492, the on and off campaign to retake Spain took 774 years. That the various Christian kingdoms were at each other's throats, often fighting with the Moors against each other, did not help. The Spanish hero El Cid was, in fact, a soldier of fortune who once fought with the Moors.
Little by little, decade by decade, century by century, the Catholics gained ground. I say Catholics because after a few hundred years (that would be 25 generations or more) the Moors were Spanish; the only difference between the two sides being religion. By the thirteenth century, Granada, which had become a provincial capital in the 11th century, had become the only capital. The Nasrid Sultanate of Granada (1232-1492) was the last Islamic state in the Iberian peninsula, lasting 260 years.
Surrounded by Christian kingdoms and plagued by internal strife, Granada became increasingly isolated from the rest of the Islamic world, particularly after the loss in 1462 of Gibraltar, a vital link with North Africa. The beginning of the end came with the marriage of Fernando de Arag—n and Isabel de Castilla, joining Iberia's two mightiest Christian kingdoms and creating a powerful army. For those having difficulty conceiving the impact of such a union, imagine if George Bush had married Caroline Kennedy. Now that would be power.
Boabdil, Granada's final ruler, lost cities one by one, until at last there was only Granada, and after that, only the fortress and palace of the Alhambra. On the second of January, 1492, after a long siege by Isabel and Fernando, during which all the mosques and much of the lower city was touched, the Alhambra was surrendered. The surrender came with conditions - las Capitulaciones - that guaranteed the Moors freedom to practice their religion and to preserve their language, traditions and justice system.
Long locked in combat, the lives of the two royal family diverged. Boabdil fled into exile with his family. Pausing on the nearby mountains for one last look back at his lost Granada, Boabdil uttered the famous Last Sigh of the Moor. The victorious royal couple, on the other hand, celebrated their increased prosperity by sending Columbus off to discover something. Of the events of 1492, the Spanish consider Columbus's voyage as the less important.

THE INQUISITIION
In 1478, some 12 years before the re-conquest was completed, the Spanish Monarchs unleashed the Jesuits and the Inquisition. Ironically, under Moorish rule, Moslems, Christians and Jews lived, worked and worshiped in relative harmony. Religious toleration ended under Catholic rule. Only seven years after the conquest, one Cardinal XimŽnes, ignoring las Capitulaciones, demanded that all Arabic books be burned. Forced conversions led to an uprising by the inhabitants of the Albayzin, the hillside Moorish quarter, resulting in their massacre. Moriscons (Moslems who had earlier converted), and particularly Jews, were persecuted. Many were tortured and executed, often by burning. Those Moslems who had not already fled were driven into the hills. The Jews, who had been welcomed to Spain following the Diaspora, and who had contributed enormously to Spanish culture and prosperity for 1,000 years, were expelled. The terror continued for centuries. In the first decade of the seventeenth century, the moriscos were deported, as the Jews had been before them. It was all downhill after that.

ALHAMBRA
The Alhambra overlooks Granada from the Sabika hill. The earliest building dates from the mid-thirteenth century when the founder of the Nasrid dynasty moved his court there from a fortress in the Albayzin.
The Alhambra includes a fortress, the Alcazaba; a palace complex, where the royal family lived; and the medina, a small town, which housed officials and included public baths, a mosque, craft-shops and small businesses. Near the center of the complex lies the Charles V Palace, built in the mid-sixteenth century on the site of a mosque in an effort to "Christianize" the site. The palace is quite beautiful, but it is rather like building a plantation house on the Washington Mall and calling it Confederate. Unbreakable ramparts and walls and more than 30 towers surround the Alhambra. The Generalife, an agricultural estate with extensive gardens and royal residences, lies on the edge of the Alhambra. An elaborate system of water conduits supplies the fountains, pools and channels. The sound of water is ever present.
Our first visit to the Alhambra was in mid-January. The day was cold and clear and there were few tourists. Even though the gardens were for the most part dormant, roses bloomed and the orange trees hung heavy with fruit. The towers were impressive, the palaces magnificent, the gardens a wonder. It was a visit that did not disappoint our high expectations. We will return in the spring when the gardens are in bloom.

OUR NEIGHBORHOOD
Sprawled over a hill across a narrow river from the Alhambra, the Albayzin is the only part of Granada's Muslim city to survive the siege of 1492 and is Spain's best-preserved Arab quarter. Although the barrio did survive, it did not thrive. It was neglected and left to slowly decay. During the Spanish Civil War, this working class neighborhood was a stronghold of resistance to Franco and his Fascist Falange. As punishment, neglect became policy. While the rest of the city slowly modernized, the Albayzin was left to deteriorate.
This began to change in the 1980s, when Moslem money began to trickle into the area. Other "investment" money soon followed. Our Spanish landlord bought our building, located at the bottom of hill, in 1987 and had it completely renovated. The infusion of European Union funds is evident everywhere. Rebuilding and renovating go on all around us, even next door, where the hammering begins at eight.
The Albayzin is primarily a pedestrian community. Narrow cobblestone lanes and rocky stairways climb the steep hillside. Very few streets are wide enough to accommodate vehicles (with the exception of the ubiquitous motorbikes and scooters) and those that can are one-way. We are always impressed as we watch the small buses and delivery trucks navigate the narrow passageways, their side-view mirrors clearing the walls by only inches. The neighborhood's colorful character and affordable prices are attracting young professionals and foreigners. The Albayzin, we have been told, is becoming gentrified.
Fortunately, almost all the rebuilding is interior, not exterior. Buildings are gutted, often leaving nothing more than standing walls, then the interior is rebuilt. There are few "modern" blemishes to interrupt the architectural continuity. The Albayzin remains a unique and fascinating neighborhood.

WE VISIT THE POLICE STATION

Part Three

Trials, Tribulations and Triumph

In which good things come to those who persevere

On the last of our many visits to the Police Station trying to obtain a Spanish Residency Visa, we were informed to return to window four in no less than 30 days. Eighteen days later we presented ourselves at window four. Flannery, who would be returning to the states the next day, was with us. If our visas were not waiting - there had been several holidays over the eighteen days and life was moving very slowly in Granada - we wanted to be sure what to do when we came back without Flannery.
Everything seemed to be in order. But we were too early. Come back next Thursday with your receipts, the man said. We decided to wait until the Monday after that.
At eleven o'clock, Monday morning, January 19, we delivered ourselves to the Police Station. Wrapped in nonchalance, Kay swaggered into the station exuding an air of sure victory. I expected to be arrested. The line was only six people long. The lady at window wore a broad smile. Each transaction took no more than three minutes. We reached the window in ten minutes. It was obviously a trap.
I gave the smiling lady our receipts. Kay stood with passports in hand. She asked for our cards. We don't have any cards, only these receipts. She asked again. Kay realized that she was asking for our old cards - if we had them. Primero tarjeta, Kay said. Our first cards. Ah, the lady smiled. She quickly went through a drawer of cards, then pulled ours out. They were the size of a driver's license and laminated. William, she said, and Kay, and lay the objects of our long trial before us.
Muchas Gracias, we said four times each.
We looked at the cards. The photos were of us. The names and address was correct. The expiration date was November 19, 2004. We are legal for ten months. Then we would have to begin again. But we are only thinking of today. And tonight. Tonight, at long last, we would break out the champagne.

HOW WE SPENT THE HOLIDAYS IN SPAIN

Our holiday season began on December 10th when we went with Flannery to Munich to see the Christmas markets. We had a wonderful time. We brought back 2 ornaments that we bought at the Christmas markets plus the rest of Flannery's things. I'd bought a little Spruce plant in October which had grown enough that it could be decorated. So when we got back from Munich we put little white lights, little red balls, and gold bells. We had our Christmas tree.
We'd watched from the end of November city workers putting up lights of all kinds all over the city. Each little side street had different sizes, shapes and colors. They hadn't been turned on before we'd left for Munich. We'd asked continuously when they would be turned on, but no one seemed to know. All of the stores and shops and businesses were decorated with lights or Santas of every color and Christmas trees, etc. The stores sold garlands and lights and all sorts of decorations, but with the exception with maybe two or three apartments, we saw no homes with any kind of decoration.
The lights finally did come on, but never at the same time or in the same order. But it felt Christmasy in Granada. In a few different streets and pedestrian areas they played standard Christmas carols and songs, mostly sung in English, which seems funny because they don't speak much English here.
On a beautiful day, about a week before Christmas, we took a picnic hike above the Alhambra. On the way back down we were in an area of pines with little cones lying everywhere. We picked up two or three dozen with the idea to make our own wreaths. So far we hadn't seen one wreath. For as long as we can remember, Flan and I have always done some type of Christmas craft. This year wouldn't be different. We went to a bargain store and bought ribbon, aluminum pie plates and green twist ties, came home, cleared off the table and made two wreaths, which were placed on each balcony.
Since our trip to Munich was our main gift to each other, we decided to put a spending limit of 10 euros on each other. We had fun going off by ourselves shopping. I had to cheat a little because I'd made a stocking for Flannery for 25 years and I couldn't imagine this year without one. It took many stores before I even found one, but I did. I managed to fill it with most of the usual stuff, plus some very Spanish things.
Christmas Eve we took our regular afternoon walk. We stopped at a riverside cafe for a drink and tapas then preceded up the hill to our favorite cafe where we sat in the sunshine and had fried calamaries and a glass of beer. Later on that evening we placed our little presents under the little tree.
For over 20 years we've spent Christmas Eve across the street with all our neighbors. Flannery always made deviled eggs, another neighbor made lumpia, and there was ham and many other dishes. We tried to recreate this feast. Trying to recreate our Christmas at home made us miss it more. We needed our friends and family more than food and decorations.
Christmas morning started off with our "usual" ham biscuits and OJ with champagne, then we opened our gifts. That afternoon we walked in the sunshine and made calls to family.
A few days later we had our first visitor, Flannery's best friend from Germany, Martin. The four of us spent New Year's Eve playing games, cooking, eating, and drinking champagne. Later we walked to the city hall plaza, just 5 minutes from our apartment. The plaza was filled with Granadians, a rock band and many decorations. Everyone was given a bag containing paper hats, noise makers, balloons, confetti, streamers and a plastic bag of 12 grapes. Thanks to Martin we got ours. At midnight we ate our 12 grapes as the clock struck 12 times, a Spanish tradition which brings good luck. There was a fireworks display off the top of the city hall that lasted 5 to 10 minutes. There was no police presence, but it wasn't needed. Boyce and I walked home while Flannery and Martin partied the night away.
The first was pretty quiet. The second, which we assumed would be a normal, working day, turned out to be just the opposite. Everything was closed. As we walked under the Alhambra, the bells were continuously ringing for the first time since we'd arrived. Boyce realized that it was Granada's liberation from the Moors in 1492, only celebrated in Granada.
The next day was finally a normal, working day. Traffic noise, lots of people walking up and down our street, and the sound of all the business opening by rolling up the metal door coverings. Once we got out we realized that we were in the midst of a whole new shopping frenzy. January 6th is the day of the Three Kings, which turned out to be much bigger than Christmas, a day for family, feasting and going to church. The Three Kings Day is the big day when kids receive their presents. This celebration included a parade down Gran Via Colon, 1 block from our apartment, on January 5th at 6:30 pm. Boyce and I went to check out the parade while Flannery watched Madrid's version on TV. It was quite a sight. Thousands of people lined the boulevard to watch the floats and marching bands go by and catch candy being thrown from the floats. It was an effort not to be knocked down as the adults scrambled to pick up the candy off the ground. After the parade everyone went home where the children put out chocolate for the kings and carrots for the camels before they went to bed.
We assume this will be the last holiday until March 1st (Victory Day). We will see.
This long holiday season is finally over. We enjoyed it, but now realize that there's no place like home for the holidays!