Sweating and sightseeing in Spain
Buenos Dias from Andalusia, Spain!
We flew into Spain through a haze of shimmering heat. The sun beat down so strong on us that the airplane window was hot to the touch and, even at tens of thousands of feet in the air, the cabin never cooled down. Most of the country was completely obscured by the heat haze, until we got closer to our destination, Malaga, a small city on the Costa del Sol popular with tourists who come for the Spanish beaches. My worst fears we’re being realized: I was going to sweat my ass off here.
We arrived in Malaga and began our journey north east a week ago. We landed, dropped our stuff at our accommodations for the night, and headed straight to the city center to a tapas bar called La Costa. We’d intentionally eaten little all day to save money on far too expensive London Airport food and our appetite for Spain. As we moved through the city at 10 pm on a Wednesday, we saw hundreds of people doing the same.
Raucous, hot, and overflowing. The bar was crowded in a different way from London. Crowded in the way that made me think we had just wandered into the locals’ favorite spot. People shouted in Spanish at one another, fighting to be heard over the tight crowd. You couldn’t move through the bar without pushing people out of the way. Was there a line to wait in? Do we have to tell the server how many we are? We were immediately overwhelmed. It would have been so easy to leave the bar immediately. We could have slipped in and out and only a handful of Spaniards would have seen us looking like foolish tourists. But we had taken a bus to get there, I was starving, and this was the cheapest place for a few blocks. We pushed through the people standing with their drinks, reaching across others to the bannister that ran along the wall and held their small plates of food, and tried to figure out what to do next. We hovered like vultures as a man was clearly finishing up at his tiny table. I asked the waitress, in Spanish, if we could take the table and she smiled warmly at me, surprised and delighted that I could communicate in the language of the country I clearly did not belong to.
We ordered, in Spanish, a half dozen tapas, two sangrias, two grande cervezas, and watched as the groups in the bar swayed and sang and laughed and ate and blotted the sweat dripping down their forehead and necks and fanned themselves (me, eyeing the women with fans with envy as the sweat pooled on my low back). The bar air was sticky with the heat of the day and the heat of so many bodies crammed in one small space. I sat there, fully overwhelmed by the sensory experience of it all, feeling the discomfort of being so out of place somewhere mingling with the pride I felt for enduring it, rather than running from it. And, thankfully, very full.
The themes of sweating and being wholly out of place would persist once we got to Granada. Our hostel in Granada was as far as we could possibly imagine from our London experience. Social and quiet with a free group dinner every night; bathrooms and showers large enough to fit comfortably into. We thought we were in heaven. Every day during the siesta- for us the period of late afternoon where we had no more sweat to give under the scorching sun- we came back to the hostel to cool down and wait to go back out again when the sun had set. We’ve been lazy here. Slowly wandering through the narrow hilly streets, lazing around in the courtyard, painting in the shade in squares. It’s taking some time to shed the “go go go” mentality but it’s slowly peeling away.
Spanish guitar with a view of the Alhambra
Granada is a beautiful, old city with a rich, complicated history of being conquered and for being a safe haven for different religions. Granada has been inhabited since, at least, 5500 BC and was first conquered by the Romans in 44 BC, then the Visigoths took the area in 476 AD after the fall of Rome, the Moors in 711 AD-just shortly after Islam was founded, and lastly, the Christian’s in 1492. The Muslim rule lasted for nearly 800 years and their influence has hugely shaped Spain and Europe in general, but most of all, Andalusia. Andalusia is the region of Spain where we’re spending the majority of our time. It’s a big chunk of the south end of the peninsula, including Seville, Cordoba, Granada and Malaga. Many things that people consider quintessentially Spanish, like bull-fighting and flamenco dancing, come from this region.
The Alhambra, the once Caliphate’s palatial city, and many other mosques in the long-ago Muslim city, physically tell the story of religious conquest. Construction began on the Alhambra in the 9th century and wrapped up around 1400. That timeline makes the construction on I-26 back home look pretty good. The Alhambra was beautiful; filled with rose gardens, wide open halls for prayer, tall towers for fortification, intricate geometric patterns and Islamic words carved into the ceilings and walls. Smack in the middle of the Alhambra sits the Palace of Charles V - a completely out of place, strange, clunky, and, frankly, somewhat boring, palace constructed in the mid 1500’s after the Christian’s took Spain. We also saw this physical manifestation of power shifts in the once mosques in both Granada and Cordoba. What were once spaces for Muslims to worship were physically altered by the Christian’s to become Cathedrals in their attempt to force the Muslims to convert to Catholicism. It’s bizarre to see the beautiful carved Arabic verses from the Quran juxtaposed next to flashy gold framed paintings of saints, gory crucifixes, and I can’t help but wonder what it must have felt like to have something so important taken from you.
Mocarabes in the Alhambra
Mocarabes in the Alhambra
Gardens at the Alhambra
Sacromonte is a neighborhood high up on the hills in Granada, across from the Alhambra. The hills are dotted with, what looks like at first glance, white and blue homes but many of them are actually man made caves, painted white with limestone. My favorite experience in Granada was the Museo Cuevas del Sacromonte- The Sacromonte Caves Museum. Granada was the last city to surrender-hoping to avoid the physical ruin of the city and under the false promise to maintain religious tolerance-to the conquering Christian’s. Under Ferdinand and Isabella (the same king and queen that financed Christopher Columbus), the Jews in Granada were forced into exile, the Muslims forced to convert or become slaves, and a 500 year long genocidal campaign against the Gypsies began. The word gypsy came from the word Egypt-which is where the Andalusian’s believed these nomadic people came from and was used by the Catholic Church to dehumanize this group of people as they attempted to wipe them off the earth. It’s now known that the gypsies were actually from India and that their preferred name is Roma or Romani. The Romani moved to the hills of Sacromonte to escape the Christian’s and began digging out caves to live in. They often had multi-room homes, caves for their horses and sheep, caves for weaving and pottery and other trades. Between 1492 and the 1960’s, the number of Romani’s living in the caves fluctuated, peaking at nearly 4,000 inhabitants just before a 1963 flood that displaced many. With time, the city has stretched to fill the gap between Sacromonte and Granada and this neighborhood is now a big tourist destination but the Romani still make their home there. The Romani developed their own version of flamenco called Zambra, where the singer also dances while singing. Here, we saw a Zambra flamenco show in a cave that has held dances for thousands of people or the course of centuries. Watching the men and women dance and sing and clap (at truly impressive decibels), it was easy to see vignettes of it in that same cave throughout time. It was easy to see the resiliency of a people hunted down for at least half of a millennia and how that strength can be communicated through the simplest tools we have: our bodies.
Sacromonte from the street
Traditional cave home in Sacromonte
Before the Christian’s conquered Spain, Granada had a reputation for being a place that Jews, Christian’s and Muslims could live in in harmony. It seems that scholars may dispute the extent of historical tolerance that existed, but, regardless of what the scholars say, this is surely a point of pride for the locals today and a lifestyle that still exists. We could see it in the locals we came across; crucifixes dangling on chains, Star of David medallions around peoples necks, women in hijabs and abayas. It was a change from the U.S., and London, to be in a place with obvious diversity and very little undertones of tension.
Unfortunately for us, the tolerance didn’t seem to spread too far to tourists. There were many times over the course of the week where I felt like the Palace of Charles V: out of place. It seems like in our second week traveling, we’ve traded the friendly people of London for the cultural differences of Spain. I don’t say this with malice or spite; I can’t understand the stressors and strains that we as tourists put on the people who make their lives here. We try our best to be kind, respectful, and as little of a burden to the locals as possible when we travel and that’s all we can do. But it has made it feel a little lonelier here. The highlight has been the community we’ve found in other travelers. We’ve met people from all over. Slovenia, Czech Republic, Brazil, America, Argentina, China, Mexico, France. Most people we meet are just like us: traveling because they’re curious, traveling because they want to know themselves and the world.
We left Granada a few days ago and are taking it even slower here in Cordoba. I’ll turn 31 here on Sunday and my only plan is to eat something delicious and float in the saltwater pool under the Andalusian sun (with sunscreen on, of course. I am 31). If you are enjoying living vicariously though us or wanted to get me a birthday gift back home, consider donating to our travels on Venmo (scan the code at the bottom of this email) or click here for our Ko-Fi. A little can go a long way here-a beer is under $3! You’ll next hear from me when we make it to Valencia- a city that I’m very looking forward to, least of all for the ocean breeze.
Hasta luego!
-Amelia
P.S. Grant created a website for us! There you can find some writings Grant has done on designs that have inspired him and a more complete list of our photos, along with a map of where we’ve been. I’m very proud of him for making it. Check it out here (ameliaandgrantabroad.com - just in case the link doesn’t work)!
Thing’s we’re still keeping track of:
Clothes with American sports logos: 18 (down considerably!)
Miles I walked this week: 45.4 (also down, but what I lack in miles I make up in sweat lost)
