Made out of people

Arcos, Ronda, Granada

So I got into the Flamenco in Sevilla. The scalper should be fired, though: half of my section was empty. And this isn´t top balcony: half of left center orchestra was empty!

(... more ... )

Anyway, the show was magnificent. Most of the Flamenco I´d seen was of the castanets-and-flashing-lights variety; this was at the opposite end of the spectrum: highly traditional, trying to reconstruct and reperform the agonized songs of working-class life around Sevilla, where Flamenco originated. It was sad, painful, and wonderfully done. My Spanish is still miserable, but getting better; I got almost none of the lyrics except for the closing song, with its chorus "I don´t want to die."

This was the emotional high point ,and the audience left singing. The mind boggles.

The next day, I took a bus to Jerez (about which virtually nothing need be said; the Sherry Bodgea tours looked too much like Winery and Brewery tours to be of any real interest) and thence to Arcos.

Arcos is perched on top of a hill with cliffs on both sides. It´s not of great value or importance, but it IS easy to hold.

Which means I need to reveal just how much of a computer geek I am by talking about these places in terms of the game Civilization. Jerez de la Frontera--"Jerez on the Frontier"--was founded on the frontier of the continuing Christian/Moorish wars that pretty much describe Spain´s history¹. It isn´t much of a city (actually, it´s kinda California-sprawl right now, but historically speaking, it wasn´t), but it was useful as a medium-sized town. For one, it was near good horse grazing land, and apparantly got its start there. Nearby is also the Grape resource, worth +1 to military morale and +1 to commerce.

So the leader build a Stables and a Barracks and a Winery and a Cathedral and then started cranking out military units.

Arcos de la Frontera isn´t near the resources, but the Moors had controlled the small town on the mountain top (+200% to defense, +2 sight) and so once it was taken, the Chrisitans kept building on it and used it for enforcement. Built a Temple, maybe some other minor military emplacements that weren´t on the tour. Same goes for Ronda (not de la Frontera), which was also perched on top of a steep hill with brutal drops on most sides.

From Arcos, and from Ronda, 100 km apart, you can see a substantial chunk of the south-western coast and mountains.

I suppose this just suggests that Civ actually manages to be a partially-reasonable model, or at least descriptor, of the way we actually do stuff. Which was the point, to be sure, but it´s startling to see it so clearly laid out: this city is for grapes, that city is for defending the hills.

Both of those towns, by the way, are now well-worth visiting; while touristy, they are beautiful: white stucco crouched over steep hills; plummeting chasms.

Arcos happened to be running a festival for the weekend ... but more on that some other time.

I´m in Granada now, which I´ve fallen a little bit in love with. A mountain city on the edge of the Sierra Nevadas (um, the Spanish ones, not the CA ones), it has a substantial college population, beautiful scenery, a famous castle on the top of the hills looking down, and a very multi-lingual group of people walking the streets all hours of day and night. When I arrived at 8 pm, the streets were thronging; when I returned from an evening of clubbing (I was recruited by a bachelorette party as the token American, I think) at 3 am, they were still going strong; as I walked up to the Alhambra at 7 in the morning, a little hung over, the last revellers were singing their way home and the morning population was heading off to their days.

The college-town parts have twisty little streets with hookah bars, tea shops, Moroccan-import stores, internet cafes, and tapas-and-beer places. (The local beer is named Alhambra, in honor of the castle.) The alt.culture shop that was going to feature in my (entirely hypothetical) movie about Berkeley, "Turban Outfitters," is pretty much here already in the tiny shops: islamic weavings, beaded cloths, bean bags, and tie-dye.

Tomorrow: more tourism, then the bus to Cordoba. Thence Cordoba to Toledo, then back to Madrid, Heathrow, and into Phase III. (There is something marvelous in my mind about the fact that the three parts of my trip are each punctuated by a boring and expensive few hours in Heathrow).

(Oh, and vote Kerry for purely financial reasons. Maybe the dollar will rise, and future trips to Europe won´t be quite so expensive. A Euro buys about a dollar of stuff here ... but costs $1.20. Sheesh. Also, I don´t think I´m going to be physically able to vote this year: I´ll get the absentee CA ballot in my hot sweaty hands on 11-1, but they have to be in on 11-2, and I´m not sure the mail will be that cooperative.)

---

¹ Columbus´ journey, for example, comes into new perspective when I realize that it was approved by Queen Isabella in Granada in February of 1492. In January, 1492, Queen Isabella and King Ferdind finally captured Granada and the hill castle of Alhambra after the Moors had occupied the area for 600 years. (Yeah, ít´s still called "occupied.")

October 3, 2004 01:27 PM | TrackBack | in Travelogue