Europe @ 2.4 km/h (50 page)

Donkey carts, heavily pregnant orange trees and haciendas obscured by olive groves announce our arrival in ‘the real Spain’ but then, I reflect, religious intolerance of the type peddled in the Mezquita propaganda is equally real and, in a sense, equally Spanish. Then, in the book I read as our bus barrels along the Mediterranean Highway,
⁴⁷
I learn that the Vatican recently denied Muslims the right to pray in their old mosque because it is now a cathedral. If only religious leaders’ vision were as broad as that sea of columns, eight sets of worshippers could have been accommodated there. No, the age of religious wars is not yet over.

1486-1491 km

Like the Pyramids, the sublime Alhambra which dominates Granada was built by cheap labour — and to last. One of the world’s great architectural complexes, the incomparable burnt-orange ensemble in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada has survived repeated waves of religious fanaticism down the centuries — and proved a special inspiration to poets. To enable those who have never seen it to visualise this man-made wonder, no description could conceivably surpass that of the Muslim poet who described the Sabika acropolis ‘as a crown and the Alhambra as a great ruby set in it’.
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On the bus to Alhambra, I meet a group of young Spaniards, also visiting the complex, who volunteer to help me into those parts of it I couldn’t possibly reach unaided, and to give me the benefit of their Spanish perspective.

Few verses can survive transplantation from one tongue to another with their beauty intact. But even in English the sentiments expressed in a Spanish poem translated by one of my new friends, Benigno, have the power to move me:

Give him alms, my lady,
For there is nothing so sad
As being blind in Granada.

The Spanish original of this Francisco de Icaza poem is inscribed on a plaque at the foot of a great bastion known as the Watch Tower. The poem has even more force when you’ve seen the Alhambra’s glories with your own eyes.

Probably the most memorable sight of any Alhambra visit is the Court of the Myrtles, located in Comares Palace, in which an ‘Olympic-sized’ reflecting pool takes up nearly an entire courtyard, fringed by porticoes at either end, and mirrors their elegant pointed arches in its hidden depths. The palace’s wooden ceiling, its craftsmanship and design, its geometric starbursts and optical wave effects, stagger the senses. Work continues, so they say, on the Carlos V Palace, a
Reconquista
masterpiece begun in 1533 — and if this is so (it is proceeding imperceptibly, if the claim is true) Barcelona’s
Sagrada Familia
may yet be completed before it is.

Benigno opens my eyes to the way mainstream Spaniards view the phenomenon of separatism. On 11 March 2004 he was in a bar in the ‘Basque Country’ (he would insist on the quotation marks) when breaking news of the multiple bombings in Madrid interrupted the morning television fare. As the newsreader spoke, Benigno recalls, spontaneous cheers erupted in the bar and ‘my blood ran cold’.

The regional bus line operates 32 coaches to the Mediterranean resort of Malaga. Not one has a ramp. All the coaches are rated ‘accessible’. Search me.

I thought we were in for a straightforward bus trip (the driver was certainly among the most accommodating I’ve met) but when, within 30 seconds of our leaving the bus station, a Spanish woman seated near me crossed herself — and on seeing there was no church in sight — I
really
sat up and paid attention.

This soft summer evening outside a fish restaurant in a covered arcade, an Hispanic Bojangles of 70 years — Pepe the troubadour, with a guitar-strumming sidekick who might have been his son (but wasn’t) — was serenading nine empty tables until he spied a lone woman sitting at a tenth around the corner. Pepe now gave his all, singing and soft-shoe shuffling his way to her side, going down on bended knee and thrusting his hands skywards in a show of bravura worthy of something far better than the look of unimpressed blankness she bestowed on him in requital.

1497-1510 km

One of the journey’s best vistas is that from high above Malaga, in the grounds of Moorish Castillo de Gibralfaro, which has overlooked the Mediterranean since the 14th century. From this eyrie — and even more clearly from the nearby parador — you can see for kilometres along the Costa del Sol.

The only sunny thing about today’s bus driver is his Ray-Bans. His tape deck plays music at well over 100 decibels, regardless of the passengers’ wishes — and, when I get down at La Linea, it does not come as the shock it should to notice my bags are missing. The cavalier driver, who was hostile from the outset to my boarding his bus, had just left them standing outside. Five sweat-inducing minutes later, the bus office assures me the three items of luggage are safe at its offices back in Malaga; the bad news is I won’t be reunited with them until about half past eight.

The looming Rock is a sight long familiar from photographs and TV programs but when first you see it for yourself it still overpowers the senses. The fact that it
is
different, and special, has aroused my curiosity. Will I find here a cloying cliché, Little Britain without the humour? The first signs are not promising. After being welcomed across the border by an immigration-service equivalent of a British bobby, the first thing that confronts me on the other side of the line is a traditional red phone booth on Sir Winston Churchill Avenue.

Finding a homely and welcoming hotel doesn’t take long. The manager’s a Scot but the breakfast, he assures me, is English. The only disturbing note is a poster out the front about Madeleine McCann. I suppose that all the rooms on minuscule Gibraltar are like mine, sufficiently close to the Rock that the last audible sound before I drift off to sleep is the screeching of Europe’s last wild apes, the Barbary macaques.

1510-1514 km

The Gibraltar most people see comprises the Rock and a precious few monuments around the town but the Gibraltar its 30,000 souls know and cherish revolves around its main street, Main Street.

Given that this is not exactly Washington, you should not be surprised to learn that this morning I ran into Gibraltar’s first citizen, the Governor, Sir Richard Fulton. I had just passed the Convent — the former Franciscan mission that has been the vice-regal residence since 1711 — and was asking a liveried guard for directions to the cablecar when His Excellency stepped briskly to his Jaguar, which was purring expectantly under the portico. I will not say Sir Richard was anything other than courteous (he acknowledged my ‘Good morning’ with a bow of the head). But our meeting was brief, and the fault does not lie with me, you see. The man had nothing to say.

I am puzzling over the apparent impossibility of reaching the platform from which the cablecar leaves for the Upper Rock when members of the Gibraltar Fire Brigade, mingling outside the station opposite, perceive my predicament and rush to the rescue. When the ticket vendor sees a blur of blue uniforms and shiny white helmets, she gives a start — perhaps momentarily thinking the gondola has caught fire — and is so taken aback by the sight of us that she forgets to charge for the ride.

The gondolier, a John Bull type with a hearty sense of humour, announces, ‘The cablecar will stop halfway up the Rock (i.e. we will be hanging in mid-air). Do not, under any circumstances, leave the cabin.’ When we reach the upper station he turns surveyor, ‘That hazy blue line you can see over to the south is the Rif, part of the Atlas Mountains. Across there’ — our eyes follow his hand as it swivels right — ‘you can see the Straits of Gibraltar; and over there’ — another 120 degrees to the right — ‘is the Spanish coastal town of Algeciras.’ Between the cablecar terminus and the restaurant are several flights of steps — which is all right for everyone else but for me to get from one to the other I must place the palms of my hands on the concrete floor and swing my torso, adopting the gait of a macaque. As I shuffle off, John Bull proffers some well-meant advice. ‘Be careful of the monkey droppings.’