‘TRAVEL

Photos Anne and James Gordon

Sunday, Aprit 9, 2000 - North Shore News - 35

rish Granada’s
feast for the senses

A spectacular memorial to its North African past

Anne and James Gordon
Contributing Writers

SPREAD across rocky hillsides and
spilling onto a broad flat piain at the
foot of the Sierra Nevada mountains,
Granada in southern Spain attracts a
multitude of tourists each year.

Its mild winters and hot summers are the
envy of the peoples of the North. Settled by
the Moors who arrived in Spain from
North Africa in 71] there is evidence
of Muslim culture in just about every
facet of its life.

The North African conquerors
were a prosperous force in the region
and their Islamic art and architecture
survives to this day. Altogether twen-
ty Moorish kings ruled before the
Nasrid dynasty finally fell to Catholic
King Ferdinand in 1492.

The Christian king was fortunate
indeed to inherit lavishly decorated
palaces, a treasure of Islamic art and
in the lush surroundings of the
Generalife, a tranquil garden par-
adis

Another important acquisition
was the Albsicin, now known as the old Arab
Quarter, and on its outer edge Sacromonte
where today a cave-dwelling community of
gypsies demonstrate for tourists the dance of
the gypsy zambra.

As in most European cities the night is still
young at 10 p.m. At my normal bedtime we
boarded a bus in downtown Granada and

alighted twenty minutes later at the end of a
dark alleyway in Sacromonte.

A neon-lit Los Tarantus, a cave Surrowed
out of the hillside, beckoned in the distance.
Welcomed at the entrance by a burly cigar-
smoking Spaniard we were ushered into a long
Narrow room reminiscent of 2 wine ceilar.

The stage, the tiniest I have seen, was a
tight fit for five dancers, three guitar play~cs
and singers as they whirled and clapped rhi
mically in time to the flamenco. With flashing

LOOKING dewn on the city of Granada from a
balcony in the Alhamira.

eyes and sleek black hair crowned with high
sparkling Spanish combs the women were
magnificent.

But it was the male dancer who brought
the crowd to its feet. Slim as a reed and dressed
in stark black and white he gave a whole new

See Night page 36

A cobbled alleyway In the Albaicin, of Arab quarter. There are churches to
explore; museums, palaces, convents, and 11th-century baths.

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