Some practical information for your stay in Montefrio...

Attention: there is currently a barricade preventing cars from entering the archaeological site, and, a few hundred yards up the road, three boulders blocking the way.  This is to prevent the site from being used as a picnic area.  You should park your car as best you can along the roadside and walk to the site, about 1 km to La Pradera.  If you call the owner of the land, Paqui, at 628305337, she will tell you (in English or Spanish) when she can meet you for a guided tour of the area.  There is no set charge for this service, since it is largely a labour of love for Paqui who has spent years cleaning the area, but any token of your gratitude will be appreciated.  You can also simply turn up and walk in, if Paqui appears just ask her to show you around.

Garbage / Rubbish disposal: put your garbage/rubbish in plastic shopping bags and drop them in the grey and green plastic bins located in the village streets and plazas.

LORENZO´S GUIDE TO MONTEFRIO

and its surrounding region, with Granada and Cordoba

La Villa is the name the Christians gave to the site of the Moorish fort, on the soaring pinnacle which overlooks the town, and on which they built a fort of their own - there was a chain of them in the region known as the Seven Villas - to protect their conquest, at the end of the 15^th century. Montefrio - or Montefrid, as they called it in Arabic - became important in 1340 when the Christians took the castle of Alcalá, just 10 miles to the north, placing our town on the frontier between the two warring kingdoms. It was then fortified for the purpose of sealing off the valley which stretches south to the great plain of Granada, where the Christians could roam and pillage at will. After the conquest in 1486, the Moorish fort was slowly dismantled and used as a quarry for the construction of the new Christian town at the foot of the cliff. Some 40 years later orders came from Castile to build a triumphal church on the foundations of the old fort, in a curious blend of the medieval Gothic and new Renaissance styles, apparently in an attempt to satisfy both the traditionalists, who felt (rightly) that the older style was more religious than the "Roman" model then in vogue, with its pagan origins, and the modernists, for whom only the antique model was worthy of imitation. The church is thus a curious hybrid, with its Gothic exterior, buttresses and ribbed ceiling; and the classical design of the door, the tympanum, the chapels, columns and the Corinthian capitels.

The church was abandoned in 1767 after lightning struck the roof, creating a smallish hole which was still unrepaired when I first came here almost two centuries later. It seems that the villagers welcomed the accident, since it gave them the pretext they needed to build a new church closer to their homes, since hiking up the hill several times a day to attend Mass had undoubtedly become a tedious burden. The accident was seen as a miracle because, even though the church was full of people, no one was touched by the falling stones, and ever since it has been celebrated on the last Sunday of each month of May, with a religious procession through the streets of the town. The holiday is called El Dia del Rayo - the Day of the Bolt.

The new church was built at the end of the 18^th century and inherited the name of its predecessor, Iglesia de la Encarnación, very popular for churches in post-conquest Granada with its huge Moorish population, because it drew attention to the divine nature of Christ and his birth to a virgin mother, two points which were seen as trump cards in the dispute with the Muslims and their 100% human prophet. The church was designed in Madrid by one of King Charles III´s favourite architects, who modelled it on the Pantheon of Rome. The great dome measures 29 metres across, and it is said that the engineers first built the circular wall, five metres thick, and then filled it with sand and stones in the form of the dome, which was laid on top of this support. Once the roof was finished, the filler was removed - a task of pharaonic proportions, indeed. The style is called French neo-classical and is supposed to express the rationality and functionalism so dear to enlightened monarchs such as Charles. It is said to be one of the only round churches in the world. Although not beautiful - it has been nicknamed "the pressure cooker" - it is most impressive inside, being almost completely windowless and undecorated, rather like a planetarium without stars. The pink marble pulpit to the left of the altar once stood in the abandoned church of La Villa, to judge by the shape of the notch visible in the wall, and was reassembled here after the lightning bolt.

On the other side of the valley in which the town is cradled stands the tall, narrow Iglesia de Antonio de Padua, a baroque construction which was built in the mid-18^th century. It was part of the Franciscan monastery, the remains of which stand next to it on the charming Plaza del Convento, from which one enjoys a fine perspective of the castle. Like most of Spain´s religious buildings, the monastery was expropriated under the liberal Reform of 1834, subsequently becoming a tenament house and bakery, before it was recently purchased by the Town Council, which plans to rebuild it as a hotel. From this plaza you can walk up into the gypsy quarter, known as El Coro, passing the few remaining Stations of the Cross, which have been whitewashed so often that they seem to have become an organic part of the walls and houses in front of which they stand. An Easter procession used to follow them up to the Calvary Chapel on the rise above the village, now a forgotten ruin. You can take this path both to visit our gypsy community and to enjoy the splendid view from the chapel.

Below the Plaza del Convento, on the main street running through the town, stands a large, low building of tawny brown stone called El Pósito, with a fronton over the main door which gives it the appearance of a Greek temple. It was built in the 19^th century as a granary and rural credit bank for farmers, to stave off the famines which periodically struck the arid region due to bad harvests. There are only several such buildings left in Andalucia, and ours was recently restored as an exhibition and conference hall, after being badly mutilated in an attempt to adapt it as a trade school.

The other jewel in our crown is the huge and spectacularly beautiful archaeological site, Las Peñas de los Gitanos - the Cliffs of the Gypsies, thus called because it was inhabited by the nomads until the end of the 18^th century, when King Charles III revoked the ban which prohibited the gypsies from settling within several leagues of the towns. The site has been known to historians since 1868 when it was visited by Manuel de Góngora, who described the vast burial grounds in his book "Antiquities of Andalucia". Since then the farmers have cleared away many of the megalithic, collective tombs in the surrounding areas, but because the land in the canyons of the site is too rocky to be tilled, many of the dolmens, as they are called, survive. Most of them, however, were pillaged by treasure hunters over the centuries and are lacking the roof slab or in ruins. They were built 5,000 years ago by Iberian tribes which lived high up on the cliffs, in a place called the Poblado de los Castillejos, and grazed their sheep and buried their dead on the floor of the protected valleys below.

There are three main areas of interest in the site, each with its own path of access. To see the dolmens on the meadow called El Rodeo, drive from Montefrio towards Granada and turn left to enter the dirt road signposted Estación Arqueológica. This sign is battered and half-hidden by grass, so keep your eyes peeled. Also, there is currently a barricade preventing cars from entering the archaeological site, and, a few hundred yards up the road, three boulders blocking the way. You must park near the highway and do the rest on foot. You will pass through an abandoned quarry, where the road curves to the left, passing through the first of two meadows. Go to the end of the road, where the parking area overlooks the second, much larger meadow, El Rodeo. To visit the best preserved dolmen, walk towards the cliffs on the right, and up onto the low-lying plateau. There is another intact dolmen on the left hand (south) side of the meadow as you overlook it from the parking area, behind an isolated clump of trees.

To visit the Poblado de los Castillejos (excavated Iberian village and Roman fortress) and the Cerro del Castillón (medieval Christian citadel), take the same road from Montefrio (direction Granada) but turn off earlier, just after the first bridge, driving up the dirt road on the left. Park near the farmhouse (Cortijo del Castillón). Walk behind the farmhouse and bear east, in the direction of the high cliffs. When the roads peters out in the sloping meadow, walk to the right until you come to the sign announcing the ruins. Climb to the top of the rise and you will discover the foundation stones of the Roman fort, with their butterfly-shaped notches in which leaden clamps were poured to anchor them together. Further on is the galvanized shed covering the excavation of the Iberian village. You can look into the shed through the windows at the back, although to the untrained eye what you see resembles nothing more than a square pit. In fact it is a cross-section of onion-skin layers of dried mud left by the village, which originally stood on the bottom of the crevasse but slowly rose in level as its huts decayed and brought the surface higher and higher, at a speed, imperceptible to the inhabitants, of, according to my calculation, about 1.5 metres per thousand years... The sides of the excavation clearly reveal the floors of houses and the hearths of their fires, as well as silos for storing grain, made by lining holes in the earth with dried mud. Objects found in this excavation are on display at the Archaeological Museum of Granada.

The Cerro del Castellón (Castellón Hill) is the island-like hill which you see, on the left, from the highway as you approach the bridge. The sheer beauty of the site vies with the fascination of its as yet largely uncertified ruins. After the fall of the Roman Empire, at the beginning of the chaotic and violent period known as the Dark Ages, the local people - descendants of the Romans and the Iberian natives - took refuge on this naturally fortified peak, first fleeing the invading Byzantines and, a century later, the Moors. They held out for five centuries, practicing their Christian faith, until the community was finally dispersed under the Caliphate of Cordoba at the end of the millenium, and absorbed into the Muslim population. (There were many such Christian - or "Mozarabic" - enclaves in Moorish Spain, the most famous of which is Bobastro in the hinterland of Malaga, with its church carved into the rock - in the shape of a mosque!) The citadel of the Castellón was excavated 20 years ago, laying bare the foundations of a grid of homes and the stone coffins of the burial ground, but since then, with the help of a shepherd, I have discovered many fascinating traces which did not catch the attention of the archaeologists, including what is perhaps the most ancient olive oil mill in Spain, a pulley used for hauling provisions up to the highest point of the hill when it was under siege, and, marvel of marvels, a baptismal font carved, in the shape of a child, into an altar-like boulder - all of which are described in detail in Roads and Trails of Montefrio, with a map to make the treasure hunt more successful...

From the southern tip of the Castellón Hill, you have a sweeping view of the Sierra de Parapanda, and the valley which lies between it and the cliffs. The gorge which disappears in the cleft between Parapanda and the lower hills on the right is called the Arroyo de los Molinos, the Gorge of the Mills. A series of six water mills once worked along the steep incline from the floor of the valley to the plain of Granada, using the natural fall of the land, from 900 metres to 700 metres above sea level in only 10 kilometres, and several of them worked until well into the century, producing the town´s flour and bread, until Montefrio was electrified. The origin of these mills has never been studied, and when I discovered the best preserved of them, at the head of the valley, I at first thought it was a bridge and could find no one to enlighten me further. Now I and others feel sure that the mills, all identical in design, were made by the Romans and adapted for use down through the centuries. The construction of the columns, made of perfectly circular rings of stone placed one on top of the other, could only be the work of experienced engineers using cheap or slave labour, and this points to the Romans, the inventors of the first hydraulic mills. This particular model was designed for streams with very small flow, deviating the water upstream from the mill along a channel until it reached a sufficient height to fill a hollow column or pen-stock, some 8 metres high. When the water was released at the bottom of the column, the high-pressure jet was powerful enough to turn horizontal mill-stones. My book contains diagrams and photographs of these fascinating devices, with a map. Although the region itself was heavily Romanised, with farming towns connected by a dense network of roads, historians have traditionally maintained that the Roman presence in Montefrio was insignificant, but I believe that the series of the six mills in the gorge, and at least one other identical mill in the village itself, near the old bridge on the road to El Tocón, proves that Montefrio was for them an important agro-industrial centre.

Take the dirt road which forks off to the right just before reaching the bridge on the highway, at the foot of the Castellón Hill. Continue several kilometres and cross the river, turning right after the small bridge. After several bends in the road you will see the mill, down on the right.

Near the highest mill on the valley floor is a segment of Roman road which, although a discovery of my own and as yet uncertified, is identical to the certified segment which exists on the other side of Parapanda mountain, and which is known to be part of a road stretching from Almuñecar, on the coast, to Priego de Córdoba and Cordoba itself. This road climbed up through the gorge, traversed the valley and descended into modern Montefrio, then crossing the Milanos River by our Roman bridge, said to be the smallest Roman bridge in Spain. You can visit it by taking the road to Algarinejo and turning right after crossing the modern bridge, then driving 500 metres upstream.

Click here to see photos of Montefrio's archaeological and historical monumentse

The Archaeological Museum of Granada - Museo Arqueológico

This is an interesting complement to your wanderings through the Peñas de los Gitanos, since it many of the exhibits come from the area. Although virtually unknown to most of Granada's visitors (and residents), this Museum is a little jewel of its kind, both for the fascinating exhibits (from all the ancient and medieval periods of southern Spain's history) and for the lovely Renaissance, or "Plateresque", palace in which it is housed, known as La Casa de Castril. It is located on the banks of the picturesque River Darro, overlooked by the Albaicín on one side and the Alhambra on the other. Open Tuesday to Friday from 9.30 am to 2.00 pm; Saturday and Sunday from 10.00 am to 2.00 pm. Walk from Plaza Nueva, following the narrow street which winds along the river.

Castles of Alcalá and Moclín, Alcaudete, Illora

You can spend a very pleasant afternoon making a triangular trip from Montefrio to Alcalá to see the Castillo de la Mota, then down the Granada-Cordoba highway in the direction of Granada to Puerto Lope, where, in the middle of the village, you will see a turn-off to Moclin; after visiting the Castillo de Moclin, go back to Puerto Lope, turn right to go north again as if you were returning to Alcalá, and take the first left immediately after leaving the village at the sign marked Montefrio. (Puerto Lope means, in old Spanish, Pass of the Wolf. The term "puerto" – ordinarily "seaport" or "mountain pass", neither of which obviously apply – here has its "special" historical meaning: from the mid-14^th century on, this place was of the strictly controlled border points or "puertos" between the Moorish realm of Granada and the newly conquered Christian territories, through which merchants were allowed to pass if they brought special permits and prisoners of war were exchanged).

First stop, Alcalá: Leave Montefrio on the Carretera de Alcalá (due north, by the gas station). When you get into Alcalá, look for signs saying La Mota (the castle) and drive up as far as you can go. Walk the rest of the way to the castle. The walls of the castle are vast, but largely empty, apart from the 16^th century church, because the fortress was blown up by Napoleon's troops during their withdrawal from the Peninsula in the War of Independence. Like many medieval monuments, it has been extensively restored, and - for once - with excellent taste and scientific rigour, well worth the visit. Thee surrounding watchtowers, or atalayas, are even more evocative, especially since they have not been restored. Seven towers stand in a huge ring on the hills around the castle, most of them clearly visible from the various roads which lead to Alcalá, and are all part of the original Moorish fortification. But when the Christians took the castle - then called Alcalá Benzaide - in 1342, they were only interested in the two which faced the south and the new frontier strip, just across which stood the Moorish fort of Montefrio. These two watchtowers were rebuilt according to the 14th century European military model, in carved granite and with elegant cornices all around - exactly like the towers one sees in medieval coats-of-arms. They are in almost perfect condition in spite of the fact - or precisely because of it - that they are "lost" among the olive groves and rarely visited. If you have a 4-wheel drive - or a pair of good legs - you can easily get to them. One can be seen on the way from Montefrio, to the right of the road on top of a hill, and the other stands on the rise above the gas station on the highway going from Alcalá to Granada. Simply set your sights on the tower you want to visit and find the dirt track on the highway which leads up towards it. You won’t be disappointed.

Drive south from Alcalá towards Granada; the landscape is extremely rocky and picturesque, as you approach Puerto Lope - where you turn left in the middle of the village at the sign marked Moclín. Apart from being extremely picturesque, the Castle of Moclín is interesting because it was the first strategic fortress - the Moors called it the ""shield of Granada" - to be taken by the Catholic Monarchs in their drive to conquer Granada, at the end of the 15th century, and it was from here that they set out to take Montefrio and the castles to the east, before turning south into the Vega. The fort itself was left to decay, like all the forts of the last frontier, and a monumental Christian church built on the ruins. There are several watchtowers, the most spectacular of which can be best seen from the Granada-Cordoba highway as you approach from Alcalá, standing all alone on top of a spur of rock, tall and cylindrical. This is the same tower you see - at its most picturesque - when you drive from Montefrio to Granada, just before you reach Puerto Lope.

Moclín is also famous for the romería or massive pilgrimage which takes place every 5th of October, called the Cristo del Paño. The story is quite complicated, but tells us something about the Andalucian obssession with marital infidelity, it being understood that this only applies to unfaithful wives, not husbands. When Isabel and Ferdinand launched their conquest of Granada from Moclín, at the end of the 15th century, they donated one of their banners to the local church, painted with a picture of Christ staggering under the weight of the Cross. One October 5th, some 100 years later, this painting was found to have miraculous healing powers: the half-blind Sacristan of the church was washing the years of grime off it when he suddenly found his sight restored. Since he suffered from cataracts, an illness then known as "the disease of the cloth", or el paño (in Spanish, to have "la vista empañada" means to have blurry vision, as if the eyes were covered with a cloth), the Christ became known as the "Christ of the Cataracts". Word spread and sick people came from all over the region, particularly those with visual disorders; but the picture also became famous for helping barren women conceive by merely wiping the canvas with a piece of linen, as the Sacristan had done, as it was paraded before them. This attracted many pilgrimesses who, evil tongues claimed, got pregnant not with the help of the picture but that of the local men they met there, and legend has it that orgiastic festivities took place with "barren" women wandering off into the olive groves with their studs. Thus, husbands who had despaired of having any offspring took their wives there to be "cured", and the wives were told to go into the woods to pick vervain to offer to the saint, with the local blades hot on their heels, while the husbands were jeered at by the villagers. There is even a flamenco opera about it called Los Cornudos de la Romería, or "The Cuckolds of the Pilgrimage". The luridly sexual aspect of the festival attracted ruffians and quacks until, in 1971, the church authorities forbade the procession altogether, although it has now been revived in a respectable form. Federico García Lorca significantly alluded to Moclín in his Andalucian tragedy Yerma - The Barren Woman.

Another castle of interest in the area, to the north of Alcalá on the Carretera de Córdoba, is Alcaudete. You will pass Alcaudete on your way to Cordoba; the castle is an impressive tawny-coloured cube rising out of a mound of white houses (to see this perspective, you must approach the town from the north). It is well worth a stop, again because the government has not yet got around to restoring the site. Drive to the large, impressive church at the foot of the castle (Alcaudete, like Alcalá, was taken in the 14th century when the Gothic style was still in vogue in Spain), somewhat deteriorated but with a richly sculpted façade, and then walk up through the gypsy cave area into the ruins of the castle, which are sufficiently intact to give you a good idea of how it functioned when it defended the Moors against the Christian raiders.

Illora (pronounced EE-yora), once the Roman´s Ilurque, is on the way to Granada if you take the right fork in the road after leaving Montefrio, as opposed to the left fork going through Puerto Lope. The drive over the northern shoulder of the Sierra de Parapanda is worth all the twisting and turning, especially if you take it in the afternoon when the sun is shining on the Sierra Nevada - the landscapes and views are simply magnificent. The town of Illora itself has been so badly disfigured by "progress" that it is pretty much devoid of charm. However, it has the same historical elements as Montefrio, with the ruins of the castle on top of a great spur of rock, and a monumental (functioning) Christian church built about 50 years after the conquest. Illora was of such strategic importance to the Moorish Sultans in keeping the Christian armies out of the Vega (which it overlooks) that they called it the "right eye of Granada".

But perhaps the most interesting thing to see - although it is not in the town itself and, unless you belong to the international jet set, you are unlikely to be invited inside - is the Torre de los Ingleses, literally, "the manor of the Englishmen". Continue on from Illora towards Granada; after a few miles, the road straightens out and runs parallel to a stream (hidden by rushes) on the left. You have to peer over the overgrown embankment on your right, as you drive along, to catch sight, far up on the rise, of two great squat white towers capped with massive roofs, like a fortress. When you come to the ancient brick aqueduct crossing the road, you can slow down for a better look. The site itself - called the Soto de Roma - was used by the Moorish aristocracy as a summer retreat and hunting ground, overlooking the Genil River. After the conquest it became the property of the Castilian Crown. At the end of the 18th century it was made over to Manuel Godoy, the young sergeant who became de facto head of government because he was the lover of the Queen. He built the manour on the hilltop and the mill on the river bank, called the Molino del Rey. Two years after Napoleon invaded the Iberian peninsula, the English helped the Spaniards get rid of the invaders, when Sir Arthur Wellesley (future Duke of Wellington) scored a decisive victory against the French at the Battle of Salamanca. To thank the Englishman, the Spanish Parliament immediately made him a present of the estate, and it has belonged to the Wellington family ever since (although Wellesley himself never visited it). The surrounding woods are full of small game for the blue-bloods to shoot at, and figures such as Prince Charles are said to come frequently, although I confess that it is not my milieu...

Priego is a typical cordobesa town, surprisingly unknown to tourists, and, standing on top of a high, but flattish plateau, is very pleasant to stroll in. It acquired its handsome monuments when its silk industry boomed in the 18^th century, being justly famous for its beautiful churches in the baroque style of the region, and an impressive fountain called La Fuente del Rey, with a statue of Neptune amidst no less than 139 water spouts. The Easter week processions are very colourful and suffer from much less pressure from tourists than the more famous ones in Seville and Granada. If you like bullfights, there is an ancient stone bullring, and corridas with a "country flavour". Take the road to Cordoba (see instructions given below for Cordoba). The Holy Week processions are especially beautiful, and only attended by the locals.You can visit Priego in the morning, have lunch there and be back in Montefrio by early afternoon, or stop there on your way to or from Cordoba.

Cordoba

You can easily drive to Cordoba in the morning, see the Mezquita and the Roman Bridge, have lunch in the Judería (the medieval quarter, once a Jewish ghetto) and be back in Montefrio by evening. Drive to Alcalá La Real (taking the road which passes the gas station, going north). Just before you reach the town itself, you will cross the new Granada-Cordoba speedway; on the far side of the overpass/flyover you turn left, where the solid white line is broken (there is a signpost marked Cordoba). When you reach Cordoba, bear straight ahead and cross the Guadalquivir River; the Mezquita/Cathedral and historical centre is on the far bank, just to the right. You should find a parking space, if necessary in a paid parking lot to the right of the main avenue, and walk from there. You will find that most of the interesting parts of town lie immediately around the Mezquita.

When the Romans colonised southern Spain, which they called Betis after the river (now the Guadalquivir, from the Arabic wadi-al-kabir. the great river), they made Cordoba their capital, and for the Moors also it was the heart of the realm, becoming one of the largest cities in the West. It was important because it was the highest point on the river which trading vessels could reach. But by the 16^th century Cordoba had become a small and forgotten town overlooking the sluggish waters of the river. The reason for its decline can be found in the water itself. The small vessels of the Romans and Moors, which came in search of the amphoras of olive oil and wheat from the hinterland, could sail up the river easily, but after the discovery of America much larger ships were built, and at the same time the river began to silt up, thus spelling the doom of Cordoba as a port, in favour of Seville, 100 kilometres downstream.

One great and extraordinary monument remains of Cordoba´s glory, the huge mosque, begun at the beginning of the 8^th century and completed in the 10^th under the Caliphate of Abderraman III, to later be transformed by the King of Castile Ferdinand III "the Saint" into a cathedral in the 13^th. You can see it as you cross the river as you arrive, to your right on the opposite bank, with the mighty baroque bell tower which juts curiously up from the great flat roof of the original building, reminding one of a gigantic square sandwich with a wedding cake in the middle.

But before damning the Christians for this crime against humanity, we should remember that until several centuries ago the notion that the convictions of others could have any value did not exist, except in the form of a totally pragmatic laissez-faire. On the site of the mosque stood a sacred Iberian ground, which the Romans used to build a pagan temple, later replaced by the Visigoths with a cathedral dedicated to Saint Vincent (of which a door and section of wall still survive). The Moors demolished the church to make their mosque which, with the arrival of the Christian knights, was adapted as a church in the usual way, that is by fitting it with an altar and chapels, in the Gothic style of the day (and which must have been rather pretty, to judge by other similar hybrids which can be found in Cordoba and Seville).

It was not until the 16^th century that, in spite of the protests of the Mayor and the people of Cordoba, the current horror was plonked into the middle of the precious forest of oriental arches. It is said that the churchmen obtained the authorization of King Charles I (better known as Carlos Quinto, or Charles the Fifth of the Holy Roman Empire), who had never come to Cordoba. But later, when he came to Andalucia in 1526 to be married in Seville, Charles was so horrified to see what the priests had done that he scolded them with the often quoted words, "If I had seen this, I would never have let you touch the old building. You have put something which one sees everywhere in the place of something which existed nowhere else". It isn´t proven that Charles really said it, but it´s true just the same!

After crossing the river, turn right at the first intersection and follow the signs to the Hotel Maimonides, winding your way through the tiny streets. The underground parking lot of this hotel is immediately to your right as you arrive and is, in my opinion, the best place to leave the car. It´s not free of charge, but you´re close to what you came to see...

I will not try to compete with the extensive literature on the subject, but rather confine myself to pointing out certain aspects of this amazing pile of antiquities, which might otherwise escape your attention.

The bell tower is unusually far from the temple itself, on the far side of the cloister, originally the courtyard of ablutions. This is because it was built around the minaret of the mosque, which was surrounded with the current construction, much thicker and higher. When you walk up to the bellfry, you take the staircase of the ancient tower from which the piercing cries of the muezin announced to the faithful that it was time to come to prayer.

The arches of the mosque were open on all side, allowing the daylight to permeate the interior, but the Christians plugged most of these doors up in order to fill them with chapels to the various saints, thus plunging the building into the gloom.

The Moors took most of the 850+ columns and capitels which support the multiple roofs of the mosque from the palaces, temples and homes of their Roman and Visigoth predecessors.

The mosque was made in three stages, reaching such a size that the ceiling became, aesthetically, too low in proportion to the depth of the hall. It was decided to raise the height of the new sections of roof, but the columns were all of the same size, so the Caliph´s architects found an ingenious solution, which, in my opinion, turned out to be the most brilliant aspect of the building: they invented a two-tiered structure of intertwined arches, which are so elegantly dynamic that they seem to be in perpetual movement.

And then there is the haunting tale of the bells of Santiago de Compostela. I tell it not only because it is beautiful, but also for what it tells us about the permanent state of warfare which is called the Reconquest. In the 11^th century, under the glorious Caliphate of the Hummeyads, the fierce military leader Almanzur led a raid into Christian lands which took him as far north as Santiago de Compostela. There, he outraged the Christians by riding into the cathedral and letting his horse drink from a baptismal font. Next, he had the bells removed from the tower and carried back to Cordoba, where they were hung all around with lamps like a chandelier, and used to illuminate the Great Mosque. Two centuries later, when King Ferdinand III conquered Cordoba, he made a point of stripping the bells of their lamps and sending them straight back to Galicia.

Walk across the impressive Roman Bridge - Puente Romano - (which, although the foundations are Roman, has been rebuilt many times over the centuries) and observe the many bird species which live in the marshes below. This stretch of the river was once criss-crossed by dams (the ruins are still visible) which directed the water into several mills scattered among the small islands. The huge (reconstructed) water-wheel - la noria - near the right bank lifted water in clay jugs up to the Moorish castle or alcázar. The triumphal arch at the head of the bridge was built in the 16th century in honour of the visit of the Emperor-King Carlos Quinto. It is set in a curious depression in the ground because, in our times, the initial embankment had to be raised to the current height, in order to contain the frequent flooding, leaving the arch literally "stranded" below. The curious tower at the far end of the bridge, the Torre de la Calahorra, was originally a Moorish gate composed of two separate towers; later, under the Christians, the two towers were filled in with a larger military construction and the ensemble surrounded with a moat, to form a fort barring entry to the city.

Other points of interest in Cordoba are the Jewish synagogue and the ruins of the palace of Medina Azahara, which was the seat of the Caliphate in the 10^th century. Unfortunately it was torn down by invading North African tribesmen and lost completely, until archaeologists recently unearthed its foundations. Part of the palace has been rebuilt, using fragments found in the ruins, to provide visitors with an idea of what it looked like.

Alpujarra, Guadix and the Castillo de la Calahorra

The Alpujarra is the region of mountain villages on the southern slopes of the Sierra Nevada which, over the years, has become highly popular with artists, writers, new-lifers and, in recent times, weekenders and holiday-makers. About 2½ hours drive from Montefrio to Capileira (the prettiest of the villages). The atmosphere has become very sophisticated since I summered there 40 years back - sort of an Ibiza in the mountains.

When the Moors were driven out of Granada, they took refuge in these mountains, which were the starting point for the bloody uprising of the "moriscos" which ended with the definitive expulsion of the Moors from the region, in 1570, by King Felipe II. The style of architecture in the Alpujarra is unique in Spain, and said to be modelled on the villages of the Atlas Mountains: flat roofs covered in a watertight clay, with snowman-like chimneys protruding everywhere; when seen from afar, each village, clinging to the almost sheer mountainside, looks like an undulating series of steps or terraces. The most famous inhabitant to date was the journalist Gerard Brenan, who lived in the village of Yegen just after World War I, on a demobbed soldier’s pension, eventually bringing the more neurasthenic members of the Bloomsbury Group up there on muleback (including Virginia Woolfe and Lytton Strachey), all of which is delightfully described in his South From Granada. (Note: the Spanish translation of this book is sold in most bookshops in Granada, but the original may be hard to find.)

Guadix (before reaching Granada, take the motorway in the direction of Murcia) is Europe's largest troglodyte city, and almost half of the homes are underground. You can walk or drive through the moon-like landscape where people have made their homes, complete with TV antennas sticking out of the soft, yellow rock like bean poles. You may be invited inside if you show interest - one man even tried to sell me his cave, and explained the special advantages of living in one: every time his wife had a new baby he just dug a little deeper to build another bedroom, taking care not to break into the neighbour's parlour, of course.

Some 20 kilometres to the east of Guadix, on the road to Almeria, is the Castle of the Calahorra - a forbidding Moorish fortress which, unlike most medieval castles, is as impressive inside as out. Standing on a naked rise at the foot of the Sierra Nevada, its massive pepper-pot towers overlook the copper-coloured plain, like a spectre from the past. It was given, in reward for his help in the conquest of Granada to the bastard son of a powerful Cardinal and direct descendant of El Cid. This hot-headed fellow, after fighting with nearly everyone, because in spite of his huge wealth he was illegitimate and never fully accepted by his peers, went to Rome where, after courting Lucrezia Borgia (and miraculously surviving the experience) he returned with architects, sculptors and even Italian marble to create, in the heart of his remote castle, an extraordinary patio in the purest style of the early Renaissance, reminiscent of the background in a fresco by Fra Angelico. Its graceful arches and columns, doorways and staircases are still, in spite of a fine coating of reddish dust from the nearby iron mines, miraculously intact (unlike its counterpart built by another aristocrat 30 miles east in the castle of Velez Blanco, which was sold to an American collector and now stands in the Metropolitan Museum of New York). As soon as the megalomaniac Rodrigo had created his spectacular status symbol, he went back to Castile and never went near it again. To see the interior, you must drive into the scruffy little village at its feet and ask for el guarda del castillo, who will accompany you in your car to the castle. There is no official fee for his service, but I usually give him 5 or 10 euros  for the group.

IMPORTANT: You can comfortably go either to Guadix + Calahorra or to the Alpujarra in a single day; but if you decide to do both, I would recommend starting early in the morning. If you are going to spend the night away from Montefrio, you could first go to the Alpujarra and sleep in, say, Trevélez. In the morning, continue east and cross the Sierra Nevada through the spectacular mountain pass Puerto de la Rágua (if it's winter, first check that the pass is open). At the foot of the mountain is the castle; next, visit the caves of Guadix, and then get on the Autovía to Granada, changing to the road to Cordoba, until you get to Puerto Lope and the highway to Montefrio.

Cuesta de la Cabra, Salobreña, Almuñecar

Everyone wants to go to the south coast, known as the Costa del Sol, at least once. I hitch-hiked along it in 1960 and find the current, built-up version depresssing. However, you can take a spectacular drive from Montefrio to the coast without having to endure any Brighton in the sun type landscapes. Drive from Granada towards Motril and take the right-hand exit at the big gas station/petrol pump and restaurant complex on the way up the hill, behind which (not visible from the main road) is the turn-off for Almuñecar/Venta del Fraile/Cuesta de la Cabra. This road forks away to the west, plunging down through one of the region’s most spectacular mountain gorges, the Cuesta de la Cabra (literally, the Slope of the Goat). It will take you down through to the Valle Tropical, squeezed in the bottom of a deep valley facing the sea, a natural greenhouse where every variety of tropical fruit is grown, and eventually to Almuñécar.

Go east along the coast to Salobreña. When over 30 years ago I first discovered this enchanting - and then tourist-less - snow-white fishing village, perched on a cliff over the sea and surmounted by its brown-sugar Moorish fortress, I felt I was stepping into a tale of the Thousand and One Nights; but, just a few years into the era of cheap air fares, Salobreña become one of the first spots on the coast to "go". Now that we're in the realistic "fin de siècle" and the dust has settled, the village can be objectively defined as a full-fledged beach resort with everything negative which the term implies. Still, it is worth walking up through the narrow streets to the (over-restored) ruins of the Moorish castle.

Granada, City of My Dreams

You can purchase my  book about Granada in the bookshop of the department store El Corte Inglés, in downtown Granada, or by requesting it from me when you make your cottage rental.  But in the in the meantime here are a few things about this unique city and its great palace which will help you prepare yourself for your visit.

Albaicin, the casbah of Granada

The old Granada stands on two hills on either side of a river, the Darro (called Aurus by the Romans, or River of Gold, and arabised as Hadarro), with the Alhambra on the left bank and the Albaicin - the old casbah – on the right. The Moors built their first castle here in the 8^th century, but with the fall of Cordoba and Seville to the Christians in the 13^th century, the refugees from those much larger cities came to swell the population of Granada, and thanks to this massive infusion of people, many of them aristocrats, and wealth, and also due to the fear that the Christians would move on to take Granada too, a new and much larger fortress was built on the other side of the valley, the Alhambra. The old fortress eventually disappeared, and many centuries later - in the 19^th, to be exact - the entire hill took on the name of one of its popular quarters.

There are several explanations of the name Albaicin, as there are of many of the old Arab names of Granada, but the one which historians currently favour is the following. In the 13^th century, when the Christians launched their triumphal incursions into Andalucia, the inhabitants of the first city to fall, Baeza (the ancient Roman citadel of Beatia) took refuge in Granada, settling outside the walls of the castle and giving their new home the name of the one they had left, al-bayazzin, or "quarter of the people of Baeza".

The Alhambra, seen from the Albaicin

The keep or main tower of the "old fortress" of Granada stood on the site of the hill´s highest square, the Plaza de San Nicolás, from which one enjoys the famous view of the Alhambra on the other side of the valley. In a single glance we can see all of the buildings of this fortress-city which the granadinos have always known as the "red castle" - calat al-hamra, or, in the Arabic word order, "castle the red".

Starting from the South (far right) is the fortress built by Sultan Alhamar in the 13^th century, when Granada became the last refuge of Moors, after being driven from Jaen, Cordoba and Sevilla. The first building on the right is the keep, popularly known as the Torre de la Vela – Tower of the Sentinel – for the great bell which the Christians hung there and which was so called because it "watched" over the town.. The lowest tower of the mass, the one whose feet rise from the greenery of the forest below the castle and which stands alone, slightly in front of the walls, is the Torre de las Armas - the Tower of Arms - and contains the main gate to the castle in the Moorish period, although it is hidden from our view because it is in the southern (right hand) side of the tower. (It has been sealed since the Christians built the gate currently used, the Puerta de los Granados on the Cuesta de Gomeez.) All of the surrounding towers and walls had a strictly military purpose and, being undecorated, are not open to the public.

In the centre of the citadel, and in the background, is the massive palace of Carlos Quinto, built by the grandson of Isabel and Ferdinand next to the palaces of the fallen enemy, which he wanted to use as royal gardens for festivities and receptions, because the Christians admired the architecture of the Moors for its beauty, if not for its residential qualities. This impressive palace, one of the first manifestations of the Renaissance built outside of Italy, was financed by a tax levied on the Moorish inhabitants of the city, the moriscos, so known after their forced conversion to Christianity. The tall pointed tower to the left of the palace is the church of Santa Maria de la Alhambra, built on the site of the Great Mosque of the palace.

All of the towers which stand to the left of the Palace of Carlos Quinto make up what is known as the Nasrid Palaces, in Spanish Los Palacios Nazaríes, which have made the Alhambra universally famous, with their magnificent halls and courtyards which were the home of the last sultans of Spain, the heirs of the Nasrid Dynasty, founded by al-Hamar ben Nasr.

The great tower which stands in the foreground is the Torre de Comares, containing the Hall of Ambassadors, and behind this tower is the Patio de los Arrayanes – Courtyard of Myrtles - around which lived the Sultan´s official wives and legitimate children, and of which we can only see the top of the western façade, whose delicate arcades stand back to back with the Palace of Carlos Quinto. The pleasantly chaotic collection of juxtaposed roofs which we see to the left of the Tower of Comares contains the masterpiece of Spanish Muslim architecture, the Patio de los Leones - Courtyard of the Lions - and the fabulous rooms which surround it, the Sala de las Dos Hermanas, Sala de los Abencerrajes and Sala de Reyes, with their ceiling encrusted with mocárabes, segments of pre-moulded plaster assembled to form stalactites hanging everywhere, like luxuriant tapestries... Immediately to the left of Comares, the graceful tower with the elegantly flattened arches was built by the Christians in the 16^th century to lodge the wife of Carlos Quinto during their visit to Granada, and is called the Mirador de la Reina - the Queen´s Balcony. The chain of walls and towers which climbs up the hill on the northern (left hand) side of the palace contains the remains of a vanished palace, El Partal with the Torre de las Damas, a mosque perched on the edge of the wall, and the four towers which were in fact small self-contained palaces, each with its own history/legend... The white house which overlooks the Alhambra from the hillside to the north is the Generalife, not the Sultan's summer palace as is often said, but a retreat in which he could escape the hubub of the Alhambra. While one of the most popular buildings of the palace, it is also the least authentic, having been remodelled in the 19^th century in the style of a Roman villa, with the addition of the famous rows of fountains.

Walking through the Albaicin and the Sacromonte

If you walk behind the Plaza de San Nicolás you will find, hidden in a maize of alleyways and in the shadow of the old city walls, the Plaza Larga, which is the heart of the medieval suburb which gave its name to the hill, Albaicin. At the end of the Calle Panaderos we come to a church, the Colegiata de San Salvador, which was built on the foundations of the Great Mosque of the Albaicin. The cloister of this church is in fact the courtyard of ablutions and one of Granada´s most ancient Moorish monuments, built long before the Alhambra and in a much rougher and simpler style, that of the Berber warriors who held sway over Moorish Spain during the 11^th century, the Almohads. You can visit it by entering the small museum of religious art near the entrance to the church.

From the Colegiata, you can cross over the Cuesta del Chapiz to enter the Sacromonte, and wander along its prettiest street, La Vereda de Enmedio (literally, the Path in the Middle), resembling a long balcony overlooking the city and the palace. From here you can see, on the arid slopes of the hill and in the shadow of the old city wall, the famous caves of the gypsies, most of which have become bleak holes surrounded with cactus trees. But few gypsies live in the Sacromonte nowadays, since most of them have moved into low-income apartment blocks in the north of the city, making way for a new sort of nomad: rich hippies and life-stylers from northern climes, who have fitted out their cosy caves with all the modern comforts, including e-mail! Further down the hill, along the only street wide enough for tour buses, are the zambras, caves fitted out as cabarets for flamenco performances.

The other main square of the Albaicin is the Plaza de San Miguel Bajo, at the southern tip of the hill, and which is called bajo, or low, to distinguish it from another place of the same name which overlooks the city from a mountaintop to the north, San Miguel Alto. This charming square is famous for its outdoor cafés and restaurants, where the granadinos take refuge on the stifling summer nights. My favourite for over fifteen years now is El Yunque, where my friend Antonio, a veteran flamenco singer, tends the bar while his wife, a former dancer of the zambras of the Sacromente, cooks excellent fried fish and gazpacho in the kitchen. I can recommend their eggplant/aubergine fritters – berenjenas fritas – as well as the chopitos, tiny squid fried to a crisp and eaten whole, innards and all.

Not far from San Miguel hides an exquisite construction of the Nasrid period, the Palace of Dar al-Horra – the House of the Queen – which was the home of the unfortunate Sultana Aixa, after her husband drove her from the Alhambra. This palace stood in the midst of a large Moorish garden, but when Queen Isabel consecrated the site as the Convento de Santa Isabel la Católica, the nuns occupied all of the grounds, only leaving the palace itself.

Walking down from the Plaza San Miguel Bajo in the direction of the river and the Alhambra, we pass by the church of San José, whose belltower was a minaret and still has its arched window from which the faithful were called to prayer. Like all of the churches of this ancient medina, San José was a mosque - the Mosque of the Hermits - until the fateful day of the year 1501 when the Christians forced the Moors to convert, and placed crosses on the roofs of their temples.

At the bottom of the hill we discover the Calle de la Calderería Nueva, very trendy among the young for the bohemian atmosphere and Arab tea and pastry shops.

When Granada was a Moorish city, the main gate was the Puerta de Elvira, which stands at the foot of the southern slope of the Albaicin. This beautiful gate with its typically oriental arch, bears the name of the city of Madinat Elvira to which it led, near the huge rock called the Sierra de Elvira, 20 km west of Granada. The long street which begins at the gate has the same name, the Calle de Elvira, and was the main artery of the old medina.

The Cathedral quarter

Soon after the conquest of Granada by the Christians, the Moorish community was forced to live apart, in the city´s high quarters, Albaicin and Antequerela, leaving the lower city - known in the 16^th century as the plataforma - to the Christians. However, the huge bazar of the Moors, which stretched from the Great Mosque (now consecrated as the cathedral) to the foot of the Alhambra hill, continued to function until the 19^th century, when it was destroyed by fire. A small replica of the market was built in a pastiche of the Moorish style, to become the tourist souvenir market which we see today, still known by the bazar´s original name, Alcaicería. This name was given to all the Oriental markets since the reign of Byzantine Emperor Justinian, who granted to the Arabs the exclusive right to sell silk, and they expressed their gratitude by calling these bazars al-kaysar-ia, the "place of Caesar".

The Plaza Bibarrambla was used in the Middle Ages as the tournament ground, where Moorish horsemen jousted before the populace, and after the conquest it was the venue for the autos-da-fé of the Inquisition, where Jews and other heretics were condemned to be burned at the stake. The square takes its name from the gate which stood at its eastern edge, on the right bank of the river which now flows under the Calle Reyes Católicos, and which was called Bib-Rambla, "Gate of the Strand".

On the other side of the now-concealed river stands, marvellously intact, a Moorish inn or fondak which became known after the conquest as the Corral del Carbón, the "courtyard of coal", because the charcoal manufacturers sold their produce in its patio, when they came down from the forests. It is one of the most impressive Moorish monuments of the city, with its elegant entrance gate of the Nasrid period, and broad, colonnaded patio. Recently restored, it houses a tourist information office, a bookshop devoted to Granada´s Moorish heritage, and several crafts shops.

The most beautiful Christian monument of Granada is, beyond doubt, the Royal Chapel, built as the mausoleum of Queen Isabel and King Ferdinand, shortly after the conquest. In accordance with the wishes of the very conservative Isabel, who died before the work began, this well-proportioned church – only a "chapel" in name - was one of the last buildings in the Gothic style to be built in Spain, at a time when the Renaissance was in full bloom. It is a treasure chest of artworks, beginning with the splended grill or rood screen which divides the nave, with its filigree of wrought-iron images. The recumbent figures of Isabel and Ferdinand (on the right) and (on the left) their daughter and son-in-law, Juana the Mad and Felipe the Handsome (she is said to have gone mad with jealousy of her dashing husband, and completely mad when he was poisoned to prevent a foreigner from rising to the throne) are gracefully carved in snow-white marble. The coffins themselves are in the crypt underneath (with a fifth, child-sized one for their son, Prince Miguel), but the bones are gone - when Napoleon´s troops invaded the peninsula they pillaged the coffins and, wreaking posthumous vengeance on the adversaries of France, threw the remains into the street. The huge and rather overpowering altarpiece in the plateresco style is of special interest for several carved panels depicting the conquest of Granada and the surrender of the Moors. The Sacristy has been arranged as a small museum housing what is left of Isabel´s superb collection of Flemish paintings, and the banners, swords and scepters which the Monarchs bore when they rode triumphantly into the city in 1492; one of the most evocative pieces is Isabel´s "portable" mirror, surrounding with golden rays. The Cathedral, which stands side by side with but separate from the chapel, is, apart from its awesome façade, which you can see without buying an entrance ticket, an oversized and lifeless tribute to the style of ancient Rome, and much less relevant to Granada´s past than a less well-known building, the Madraza, the Islamic University which faces the Royal Chapel. Although it was later rebuilt as a baroque palace, to house Granada´s town hall (the building is now a cultural centre), the Madraza´s small mosque, miraculously conserved, is an exquisite example of Nasrid architecture which, because it was sealed up for so long, still retains much of the paint which originally decorated the walls and ceilings, thus giving us a precious glimpse of what the Alhambra´s famous rooms looked like before their colours faded. You can see this oratory or mirhab by entering the main door on the Calle de Oficios and crossing the lobby.

Be particularly careful in the streets around the Cathedral for beggars who are often also pickpockets and purse snatchers. Say firmly, to the portly gypsy women who try to force a sprig of rosemary on you, offering to read your hand, "No quiero", and don't let go of your bag or camera in public. Another favourite place for this kind of petty crime is the Mirador de San Nicolás, the square in the Albaicin with the wonderful view of the Alhambra. When they get hauled into the police station, they are let free a few hours later for lack of anywhere to put them, as a result of which tourists are fair game.

A word of warning: Granada, like many Spanish cities, has recently been invaded by groups of Rumanian beggars, highly organized and travelling in BMW motor cars!   You will recognize them by their bandanas and long skirts, which makes many tourists think they are Spanish gypsies.  The men play waltzes and tangoes (La Cumparsita, Blue Danube...) on rasping violins and mechanical-sounding accordeons, at top speed, and then do high-pressure begging among the tables of sidewalk cafés.  They are causing a major headache to our social services and police squad so you are asked to steadfastly ignore them, in spite of their moaning voices and destitute appearance - in fact they are herded through the towns by men with cell phones who direct them to the spots where there are the best pickings.  Do not confuse them with our local gypsy musicians, who play flamenco guitar, sometimes well, sometimes not, and are suffering greatly from the unfair competition!

Continue up the Calle de Oficios, cross the Gran Via pour and plunge into the mesh of narrow streets. Just before you get to the Calle de Elvira you will find an excellent tavern where you can find refreshment, the Bar Castañeda, said to be the oldest in town. The jumilla in one of the many vats is velvety but packs a punch, unless you accompany it with the house´s excellent tapas... A bit further on and we come to the Plaza Nueva, a popular meeting place at the foot of the Alhambra, dominated by a great 16^th century palace, the Chancillería, built as the administrative centre of the newly conquered territories in southern Spain and the Canary Islands. From here we can walk (but not drive) up to the Alhambra by the picturesque Cuesta de Gomerez and through the leafy forest planted by the Christians, since under the Moors the hill was kept free of vegetation for reasons of visibility. Plaza Nueva is the starting point for the most beautiful walk in Granada, and perhaps in all Spain, along the banks of the River Darro. The stream is crossed by two 16^th century stone foot bridges, and we can see, on the other bank, the remains of a much larger and higher bridge, built by the Moors, the Puente del Cadi. This favourite subject of the painters of the Romantic school was part of the fortified wall which descended from the old fortress of the Albaicin to the river and then rose up to the main palace gate, the Puerta de las Armas, which, since the bridge collapsed centuries ago, has been sealed and half-buried in the vegetation of the hillside. Next to this bridge there was a mosque, of which the only remaining trace is the hammam, the public bath which is known as El Bañuelo, and whose capitels were taken from the ruins of the great palace of the Caliphs of Cordoba, Madinat Zahara, and other Roman and Visigothic temples... Those who have had the chance to visit the archaeological site of Las Peñas de los Gitanos in Montefrio will enjoy seeing the contents of some of our Iberian tombs, the dolmens, in the Museo Arqueológico de Granada, a few hundred feet upstream, with its superb collection of remains from all the civilizations which have settled in the region of Granada. But it would be worth visiting only for the charming 16^th century palace in which the museum is housed, the Casa de Castril, with its elegant, time-worn courtyard, in which the very shadows seem redolent of the mystery of the Albaicin of Lorca and De Falla...

Speaking of these artists who contributed so much to the image of Granada, you can visit their homes which have been arranged as museums. The sprawling city has now surrounded Lorca´s country house, the Huerta de San Vicente, with the Granada ring road running uncomfortably nearby and a Chirico-style modern park complete with geometrical cement walkways and tubular black lamp posts, incongruously named after this most precious and hyper-sensitive of poets, sprawling to the West among the high-rise apartment blocks. Lorca´s quaint farm stands isolated in the midst of all this functional design like a nostalgic oasis of cypress trees and wooden gables; the interior has been tastefully arranged by his niece as a shrine to his life and work. I personally prefer the way the Granada home of composer Manuel de Falla - between the Alhambra Palace and the Alhambra Palace Hotel, in the Antequerela quarter - has been presented, for the joyous disarray of the master´s personal effects and mementoes of all the artists who visited him, with a lived-in look which belies the rather pedantic name of the place, Casa-Museo de Manuel de Falla.

Driving instructions from Montefrio to Granada

Granada is 50 kms away. There are three ways of getting there from Montefrio: the longest and least interesting is the oldest one, signposted in the Plaza "Granada"; don’t take it. The quickest road is the new one which goes through Puerto Lope; the most scenic one goes through Illora.

Leave Montefrio in the direction of Illora, at the east end of town where the Civil Guard station is. After several miles you come to a fork in the road. To the right, you go over Sierra Parapanda and through Illora; to the left, you cross a plain and reach the Cordoba highway, where you turn right and go through Puerto Lope. My advice: take the Illora fork at least once, preferably in the afternoon when the sun is shining on the Sierra Nevada, and the rest of the time use the newer, Puerto Lope route.

If you want to go straight to the Alhambra, as you pass through the outskirts of the city, turn off to the motorway, called the Circunvalación, in the direction of Motril. Once on this ring road, drive around the south of Granada and turn off at ALHAMBRA. This will take you straight to the palace parking lot without going through city traffic. Many of my guests have found it pleasant to first go to the Alhambra parking lot, visit the Alhambra for an hour or two, then walk down the hill to Plaza Nueva and have lunch in the Cathedral area or the Albaicin, and then either walk back up or take the Alhambra bus from Plaza Nueva, get back into the car and drive back along the Circunvalación, exiting for Cordoba, thus getting back to Montefrio without having had to drive through Granada’s congested streets.

If you want to go to the Cathedral area, and the Albaicin, do as follows: As you enter the city, the road curves sharply to the right (STOP light). Just 50 metres after this turn you take a left turn at the next stop light, following the traffic into the city centre. This takes you onto a wide avenue (Avenida de la Constitución), which, after some 6 blocks, bends slightly to the right and becomes the Gran Via. There are various signs which do not seem to have been designed for anyone to understand them, but which mean that only taxis and buses can drive through the town this way, but that private cars can continue as long as they are going to the new parking lot in the centre, Parking San Agustin. So continue straight ahead until you see the blue P sign of the parking lot, just before you get to the end of the Gran Via . Leave the Gran Via, turn right at the first corner, and then at the second corner as if you were going to return to the Gran Via, and you will find the entrance to the underground lot on your left. This is the most convenient place to park for visiting the historical part of town.

When you return to Montefrio from Granada, take the directions MALAGA and then CORDOBA. Go in the direction of Cordoba for about 30 km. Go through the village of Puerto Lope. Just after leaving the village, turn left at the sign for Montefrio.

How to get around in the Albaicin

Driving in this quarter is extremely difficult, so don´t try it. There is a small bus which will take you from the Gran Via and Plaza Nueva through the Albaicin, and you can get off at the points which interest you (it comes past ever 10 minutes or so). Unless you have an impediment or feel it´s too hot, do it on foot. From the San Agustín underground car park, cross the Gran Via and the Calle Elvira, climbing up the Calle de la Calderería, and its continuation, the Cuesta de San Gregorio. Leaving the Church of San Gregorio behind on the right, take the broad staircase which hair-pins upwards, leading you to the Church of San José, which is remarkable for its bell-tower which is in fact the 10th century minaret of the mosque which once stood there. At the top of the hill you will find the Plaza San Miguel Bajo, with its outdoor restaurants. From there you can walk to the Plaza de San Nicolas with its incomparable view of the Alhambra; from there turn back into the honeycomb of streets to the secluded Plaza Larga, hidden behind one of Moorish Granada´s oldest gates, the Puerta de las Pesas... and to the Colegiata de San Salvador with its remarkable cloister, once the courtyard of ablutions of a mosque; from the Colegiata it’s just a step across the Cuesta del Chapiz and you’re in the Sacromonte, with its gypsy caves, now almost entirely upgraded and inhabited by American, Canadian and Japanese new-lifers.

Eating... and drinking

Tapas, gazpacho, jamón and other delicacies

We are far from the international restaurants and British pubs of the Costa del Sol - the system here is andaluz only. Few untouristy Spanish towns have restaurants that are up to much anyway - what people do when they want to eat out is order tapas. These are the tasty titbits you are always served free with each drink, one of the nicest things about living in Spain! As well as the free tapa, you can order a dish - ración - or two of the same thing, and by sharing them among you make quite a pleasant meal. The custom here is for everyone to eat from the same dishes by jabbing what they want Arab style, but if you ask for individual plates - platos - they'll be brought to you. Here is a basic description of what most taverns have to offer:

The big favourite (everywhere in Spain, no matter how far from the sea) is deep-fried fish: calamares are rings of squid, a delicious tiny version of which is called chopitos. Boquerones are deep-fried anchovies (you munch the whole crispy thing); the same fish is also served filleted and marinated (in raw state) in olive oil, vinegar and garlic, and then it is called anchoas (this is a great treat and should not be missed - you will often see a tray of the tiny filets on the bar counter, immersed in their vinaigrette and sprinkled with parsley). Lenguado are small sole and are best when done a la plancha; gambas are shrimp or prawns of varying sizes, usually served a la plancha (in Spanish, frito means deep-fried and a la plancha means skillet or pan-fried) with heads, legs and all - you peel them yourself (it's messy, but fun - and the shells keep all the tasty juices in). Slices of deep-sea fish are usually done a la plancha: aguja (needlefish), rape, pronounced Rapay (this is the one which makes the Brits howl, especially the usual translation of the dish "rape a la marinera - rape, seaman's style") which is nothing more frightening than angler; pez espada (swordfish) is also a big favourite. Salad is ensalada and usually composed of tomatoes, lettuce, onions and olives and served without dressing - you usually are expected to pour on the aceite (oil) and vinegar yourself. If you want to ask the waiter if the salad has already been dressed, point at it and say "Está aliñada?" (esTA-aleeNYAda?)

One of the most surprising things about Spanish cooks is their apparent inability to make tasty salads - they don't even take the trouble to shake the water out of the lettuce! But they make up for this minor crime with what is perhaps Spain's greatest contribution to world cuisine: gazpacho, a summertime chilled soup which is essentially a liquid salad thickened with bread dough, and flavoured up with lots of rich olive oil, garlic and vinegar (it should be made with virgin - that is, unrefined - oil). It can be drunk as a soup, or simply as a beverage to accompany your fried fish (that's the way it's best, I think). Before tomatoes were brought to Spain from the New World, in the 16th century, gazpacho was made by harvesters to cool off at lunchtime, by crushing bread and garlic in a bowl with plenty of olive oil, and then pouring fresh spring water over the resulting mush. It is often assumed that the tomatoes, a later addition, are the decisive ingredient, but in fact it is the oil - which is why many gazpachos served in expensive "international" style restaurants, which fear displeasing their foreign customers with the overpowering taste of unrefined oil (such as one I had recently in Malaga Airport) seem, disappointingly, like bright-red cold tomato soup. The only thing to do in such a case is ask for the olive oil, check it for the deep green colour, pour on one or two tablespoons full and stir it in. ¡Viva la diferencia! But our Montefrio gazpacho is the real thing, not "watered down" for foreigners...

Fried potatoes - patatas fritas - are fried in olive oil like everything else, and are usually good. However, the local way of fixing potatoes is a sort of hash called patatas a lo pobre (potatoes poor man's style) with green peppers, bits of bacon and chorizo, and lots of garlic and olive oil. When properly done, it is delicious.

The Spanish eat lots of eggs, but never boiled. They either fry them - huevos fritos - or make an omelette - tortilla (no relation to the Mexican variety). There are two basic kinds of omelette - tortilla española and tortilla francesa. The Spanish type is a potato omelette, with lots of potato and onions - delicious, very filling and always a good stand-by if you don't know what else to order. It's often served cold, in wedges, as a tapa, or even as the very filling filler for a sandwich; in fact, without this legendary rib-liner the Spanish population would probably have been decimated by famine many times over during its long, lean past. The "French" type is a plain omelette with nothing in it (shows what they think of the French - had it in for 'em ever since Napoleon was here!). But if you like frothy, buttery omelettes of the kind one gets in France, stay away from this mis-named concoction: it’s always fried to the consistency of a leathery pancake.

Speaking about that English thing invented by the Earl of the same name so that he could play chess with one hand while he ate, in Spain there is a clear technical distinction between "un bocadillo" and "un sandwich" (written sanuich and pronounced, in Andalucia where we don´t like consonants at the end of words, sanwee). A bocadillo is a roll or chunk of bread with a wedge of ham, cheese or sausage undecorously inserted in it, whereas a sanuich is a more sophisticated affair only available in smarter places - which is really what we call a grilled or double-decker sandwich, composed of slices of white packaged bread with bacon, egg, cheese, lettuce and mayonnaise, or whatever, served warm. You can also have it just with ham-and-cheese (the ham will be the packaged type you are used to). Just ask for a SANweesh-day-hamON-ee-KAYso.

Ham is the great delicacy here, but not the cooked kind mentioned above, which, strangely, is called York Ham - jamón de York (haMON-day-YOR). The local cured variety is called jamón serrano, mountain ham. Try a bit to see if you like it, it's delicious but takes getting used to - here we like it on the pink, raw side, but in the cities you can get the more aged, or "cured" varieties. Ideally, Spanish ham should be sweet rather than salty, and the whole art is to get the raw meat to start ageing (or drying, whichever you prefer) with the minimum amount of salt for protection, relying thereafter only on the cold mountain air which blows through the open attics of the farmhouses (see my article ¡Jamón Jamón! on the Internet).

There are several varieties of pork sausage, mainly chorizo (juicy and tender, and spiced with a paprika made from red peppers called pimentón) and salchichón, very similar to Italian salami. Montefrio is famous for its delicious, but very rich black pudding, or blood sausage: morcilla. You will often get a fried chunk of it as a tapa - which is about as much of it as my digestive system can stand at one go.

Beef is still seen as something of a luxury meat here and called ternera, which means veal - although real white veal is unknown. You can order a filete de ternera in any decent place, this being a thinnish beefsteak fried in... olive oil. Not very exciting! You can get lamb chops - chuletas de cordero - in most eating places, but they mercilessly over-cook them. Strangely, herbs such as rosemary and thyme are not used in local cooking, except to flavour table olives and make medicinal brews. As a rule, the pork chops - chuletas de cerdo - are equally disappointing, being, once more, fried-boiled in oil without any sort of spices.

Paella is another rather glamorous dish which has humble origins; it was invented, not by the sea, but in the mountains, where hunters fried a mixture of rabbit and peppers in a broad flat pan balanced on three stones over a blazing fire, which they then covered with rice and water. The more sophisticated, seafood-based Valencia version, now common everywhere, came later. It is interesting to note that the name paella comes from the Latin (and Catalonian) patella, which simply means pan; in any case, the dish is usually referred to by most Spaniards simply as "arroz" - because rice is seldom if ever eaten any other way. There are regional variations: the classical eastern seaboard version is cooked drier than what you will be served here, since in Andalucia we prefer the rice with some unctuous, saffron-coloured gravy in the bottom of the pan.

What to drink...

White wine is vino blanco, red is vino tinto and a glass of draught beer is una caña (literally, "a cane" - from the segments of bamboo cane traditionally used to taste wine in the cellars of Jerez). Spaniards don't usually drink sweet sherry (Jerez) which is largely exported to England - the most popular sweet wine is the Malaga version (although it´s all in fact made in the Cordoba region) which you can order by saying vino de Málaga). The "sherry" preferred here is the dry, pale variety, and if you want a glass just say un fino, and it will be served to you in an elegant, fluted glass called a catavinos (literally, a wine-taster’s glass). A lighter variety of this type of wine, made in Cordoba, is Moriles. For a better quality dry white apéritif wine ask for an amontillado. If the tavern has wine in the keg you should try the local Granada brews, a semi-sweet claret called alpujarreño or simply costa, because it comes from the hills of the Alpujarra region, where they slope sharply down to the southern coast. Spain’s best red wines come from the northern Rioja region, and are sold in the same cylindrical bottles as French Bordeaux - for good reason, since it was Bordeaux wine technology which, in our times, overhauled Rioja production methods and made this superb wine what it is today, with its distinctive vanilla-like bouquet. A word of caution, however: there is a lot of cheap Rioja on the market, such as the Campoviejo brand, which is certainly no better than cheaper reds from humbler (read: less-touted) regions such as Valdepeñas. In most run-of-the-mill bars and restaurants in Spain, this is what you will be served if you ask for Rioja, so you should ask for something better, such as a Paternino or Faustino (the Faustinos get better and more expensive as the Roman numerals decrease - Faustino VII, VI, V, etc.).

Most restaurant-bars will prepare you a sangria, the famous punch made of red wine, brandy, fruits and soda water, but a less sweet and much more refreshing drink is the very popular vino de verano (summer wine) which is simply soda water and red wine on the rocks. A very nice alternative to beer, when you want to quench your thirst. It can be made with casera blanca or casera de limón, plain or lemon-flavoured soda.

Breakfast, Spanish style

Although you can get pseudo-croissants in most places in Spain nowadays, the traditional Spanish breakfast is still the most delicious. There is the legendary chocolate con churros, a cup of chocolate so thick that the spoon will stand up in it, and coiled fritters which are pumped out of a huge canister into a tub of hot oil - delicious but rather heavy on the stomach. I prefer the classic pan con aceite y tomate. A roll is nicely toasted in two halves and then spread with crushed fresh tomato pulp and olive oil, and a generous sprinkling of salt (in some places you are expected to put on the olive oil and salt by yourself). This brilliant Catalonian invention (they serve it to accompany meals as well as breakfast) may sound strange, but once you try it you never want anything else.  

Where to eat, drink... and tapear in Montefrio

At last count, Montefrio had over 40 bars - which is about 1 for every 200 inhabitants, including babes in arms and old-timers who never move away from the TV set! Tapas are served free of charge with each glass of beer or wine, but if you want to enjoy interesting, freshly-cooked tapas you must do your pub-crawling in the few hours before lunch time, that is between 11 and 2. I used to have a list of my favourite bars but it got so long that I decided to tell my guests to explore for themselves...

Restaurants in Montefrio

There are only a few real restaurants, since the Andalucians prefer to drink in public and eat in private; but most bars serve food as well and the only real way of distinguishing a bar from a restaurant is because it has a comedor, or dining room. La Fonda is known for its good cooking and is the village's traditional "meeting place" (in the Plaza). Casablanca has a very plesant outdoor café in summer, just up from the Plaza over the public fountain, and has an indoor dining room as well. Coronichi (at the far end of town, above the Civil Guard Station) is our most elegant eating spot, very clean and quiet, with real linen on the tables and an open air terrace in summer. Bartolo the owner does a very nice asparagus gazpacho - gazpacho de esparragos - and grilled salmon steak in a creamy, green peppercorn sauce. Next door is Bar del Justo which makes excellent food and tapas - I find the dining room rather sealed-in and prefer to munch my fried squid uncomfortably but cheerfully in the noisy bar room. Just before you get to the petrol pump (gas station) on the Carretera de Alcalá is a roadside tavern called Los Pollos. The main bar/dining room is gloomy and austere, but in summer there are tables outside on the streetside, with a barbecue pit where lamb, pork and sausages are grilled, or over-grilled, as you like. Jomay is a bar-pizzeria-restaurant which is very popular with the young (in front of the Civil Guard Station). When it's hot, though, the best place to sit is under the leafy trees of the terrace of the Mesón Curro Lucena, a few miles out of town on the way to Illora, just before the turn-off to Las Peñas de los Gitano. A few miles in the other direction, going towards Algarinejo, is El Albero, a clean, well-lighted place, as Hemingway put it, with a bull-ring in the back, where small bulls are sometimes caped by budding bullfighters on Saturday afternoons. Los Arcos is tucked away on an obscure street of the north side of the village and the dining room is, once more, rather claustrophobic; but in summer they also serve on the terrace of the market building nearby where you can enjoy their good cooking while gazing at one of Montefrio's most spectacular views of the castle.

The reader may have gathered that Spanish dining rooms are often formal and unwelcoming places which are usually empty anyway, because Spaniards prefer eating tapas at the bar. My advice, in this situation, is to take your meals at any table you can find in the saloon and wave off the owner as he desperately tries to herd you into the claustrophobic comedor, with its artificial flowers and over-powering smell of spray-can disinfectant.

As for the breakfast treats described above, my favourite spot is the Bar Churros (when facing the door of the round church on the Plaza, turn sharp right down the hill; the churrero is on the first corner on the right).

Shopping for groceries, bread, olive oil

The omnipresent staple of the Spanish diet can either be bought at the bakery near the Plaza or - more conveniently - from the delivery vans which go about the village in the morning. There are three types of bread: normal (which I find too spongy); integral or whole wheat (which falls far short of the whole wheat bread one is used too); and casero, or home-made (by far the best - it has less yeast and is flatter, but much tastier and more consistent than the normal).

There is a travelling market - mercado ambulante - which comes to the village every Monday morning (from 10 am to 1.30 pm) and is currently set up in the school and sports area, in front of the public swimming pool. Popularly called El Baratillo ("the cheapie"), the market attracts many country families who come to do their week’s shopping - the fruit and vegetables are fresh and, as the nickname indicates, very cheap.

There are a number of small supermercados in the village, all of which are actually largish grocery stores - with the exception of the newest of the lot, the IBERPLUS, which has everything (except a fresh fish counter) to qualify it for current-day supermarket status: a fresh bread stall (the bread is brought in daily from the famous Alfacar bakeries near Granada; my favourite type of bread is a flat, chewy, airy loaf called chapata), an excellent fruit and vegetable counter, a selection of better wines and a fairly well-stocked butcher shop. (At the meat counter, remember that, by default, all red meat on display in Spanish butcher shops is pork.) They often have beef and lamb - of the very best quality - but you must ask for it: beef is ternera and lamb is cordero. The most tender cuts of beef are entrecote and cadera; if they don’t have these, make it clear that you want something tender by saying that it is para filete (stewing beef is generically referred to as para guiso). They will cut up the chicken any way you want - you can ask for six legs and they’ll take out three chickens and chop them all off without batting an eyelash! (They reason they don’t object to being stuck with legless chickens is that Spanish housewives never roast a whole chicken, they have it all chopped up in small chunks which they then deep-fry, so they don’t care if parts of it are missing. It is interesting to note that, in this olive oil-oriented culture, people seldom use their ovens at all, except for baking the occasional cake).

All food stores are open from Monday to Friday from 9am to 2pm and 5pm to 8pm, and Saturday mornings, except IBERPLUS which is open on Saturday afternoons also, except on long holiday weekends, which the Spanish call puentes. There are several family grocery stores which are open on Saturday afternoon and Sunday mornings too, known by their owners´ names.  But since these go in an out of business periodically you should ask my manager for the one currently in vogue.  Very useful for visitors arriving at odd hours and who are in need of basic supplies.  There is one day in the year when BOTH restaurants and food shops are closed all day long, and that is 25th April, the Day of San Marcos, local patron of farmers.  Then, weather permitting, the entire village closes down for a picnic in the country!

If you want to visit a mill and take away a 1 or 2 litre container of high quality oil, drive over to the coop, just behind the school compound, the Cooperativa de San Francisco. The mill itself is down on the left, but the office where they sell the oil is on the second floor of the new building up on the right, with the words MONTEVILLA written on it in red letters. 

A frequently asked question... What do the villagers live on?

In Montefrio, there are two major sources of wealth, one of which is overwhelmingly conspicuous, and the other totally invisible: olive oil and emigration.  Far away, in the commuter suburbs of Barcelona, Palma de Mallorca, Lyon, Hamburg and Manchester, live a full half of all native-born montefrieños, who have left behind their whitewashed cortijos, donkeys and fig trees for a very different kind of existence, that of factory workers, barmen, truck drivers and seamstresses - well-paid cogs in the great wheel of modern European society... Many of them return home to open small businesses, or live on their pensions, and much of the new construction you see in town was financed with their earnings. Then there are those who have made their homes elsewhere and only come home to visit their loved ones, and pay homage to the village Madonna as she is paraded through the streets on the Day of the Virgin, every month of August.

As a rule, the stay-at-homes are the store-keepers, the landed gentry, the tradesmen, the tavern keepers and the old, infirm and simply unambitious. In other countries, travel is a privilege of the rich, but in Andalucia, it is - and has always been, since the discovery of America - the only way to escape from poverty. Only the wealthiest members of our community can boast of having never been further than the city of Granada - if you can afford to stay home, why go anywhere else?

There is also a great deal of seasonal emigration, centred around the Balearic Islands tourist industry. Every year in March hundreds of montefrieños - including most of the gypsy community - move to Mallorca to do menial work in hotels, and do not return until October. Others leave the village in the summer months to work in harvests around the country (garlic, strawberries, apples) and the grape harvest in La Mancha and southern France.

You can order Lorenzo's books on Montefrio and Granada by clicking on Editorial Natívola

for the finest collection of photos of the Alhambra and the Albaicin on the Internet, visit my Granada site: www.vivagranada.com

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