For Those Who Stay

The three hour bus ride from Seville to Granada was lulled along by English voices, some of them louder than others. The road outside grew more and more rugged, hills giving way to small mountains, the temperature dropping the higher we went. It would have been easy to get caught up in talk of life back home, and dietary cravings, and the sensational hookups of young people here, but I kept my headphones in and kept my thoughts to myself. I looked out on perfectly aligned olive trees irrigating the horizon, and small white pueblos crawling up hillsides, and I felt happy to be in Spain. The soundtrack was a familiar tune from my newfound obsession with Mumford and Sons.

and the time we were given will be left for the world,
the flesh that lived and loved will be eaten by the plague,
so let the memories be good for those who stay

Those small hills eventually turned into the Sierra Nevadas, and the highest peak of the Iberian Peninsula. It was a clear day, and the snowy peaks sent sunlight down the mountain until the snow disappeared and turned to rock and the rock turned into the city of Granada. You hear surprisingly little about Granada around Spain -- it is one of its hidden gems -- but it did not take me long to grow attached. Some places have red flashing lights and bright beacons lighting up the sky and you just cannot explain why to anyone; Granada is one of these places to me.


If Granada is something of a forgotten place now, it was everything in its heyday. Until Isabel and Ferdinand arrived in 1492, it was the final Muslim stronghold, the definitive point or Moorish legacy. That peculiar race, the Moors, more a mix of people than a set national identity, had spread Islam across the peninsula for centuries. These were some of Islam's best moments, supporting equal rights, religious tolerance, libraries, universities, and supreme engineering feats, all lost in the perception of today's radical Middle East. Many argue the Renaissance was made possible by Muslim influence in the south, and this period of international greatness is no better felt than in Granada.



The Alhambra is a palace, or series of palaces and gardens, originally started in the 1000s and added onto century after century through Muslim an Christian kingdoms. It is the number one most visited spot in Spain -- more than the Sagrada Familia or the cathedral in Seville -- bringing in annually around four million tourists. Every year, mostly in summer months, these people walk its steep inclines, gaze upon its Arabic fountains, and look out on Granada from the tallest tower like people have done for centuries.

A man in a bar once told me Granada is a city you go to fall in love, and it does seem like the place to do that. Though when we call a city romantic, I'm still not sure what that means, because to me every sort of place is begging for a love story and I always make them up in my mind. Perhaps by romantic we mean timeless, and Granada does strike me as that. Most places it's difficult to see yourself along the diluted path of history -- we have to build parking lots and skyscrapers and bowling alleys -- but in Granada it could be any year and the view has not much changed.







The Royal Chapel sits down the road from the Alhambra, past old Arabic shops full of tourism paraphernalia. The remains of Ferdinand and Isabel are inside, provided you pay the fee. These two figures ruled half the world, for better or for worse, and decided to call it quits in Granada. Living in Spain, it is hard not to imagine these figures in life. They did a lot, and brought a very fragmented country together, while sending out the expedition would change the course of everything. They were the personification of Spain before Spain went south.

The monument to these people is -- in the true nature of Catholicism -- an extravagant gaudy relic that shows the king and queen dead and still with lions asleep at their feet and angels around their bed. I often wonder what people think about in that reclined position when they know they are soon going to die. I imagine in the old days, watched by a most unforgiving God, they would be thinking about that God's judgement. I personally think memories alone are meant to carry us in those last moments of life. As king and queen, looking at a very big life, I am sure there was plenty to think about.


The bus ride back was one of those rides you don't want to end, and I did as people do and drifted off to sleep thinking about all that shit that just happened. I will probably never have servants or live in a royal palace, but I don't much want those things. Our measure of success varies, and that's fine; one person is discovering America while another invents the boat that takes him there. I live in Spain while someone I know explores a dark corner in South America. It's all this crap that takes us, step by step, slowly, unrelentingly, from the world in 1492 until now.