For 700 years, the Arab ruled over large swathes of the Iberian Peninsula, changing European history. And driving through Andalusia — where Arab kingdoms of Spain had their strongholds — you can still see the Islamic influence, six centuries after Reconquista, writes Kushan Mitra, who travelled from Madrid to Andalusia, covering 1,300 km in less than a week
Spain has the longest network of motorways in Europe at over 15,000 km and many of Spain’s motorways, called the Autovia, have been built or improved in the past two decades, thanks to money from the European Union. While I have driven in Spain in the past, they have mainly been short loops around Barcelona and I have always wanted to drive through the Iberian Peninsula. Coupled with my desire to knock off another major historical monument from my bucket list, which was the grand fortress of Alhambra in Granada and the Nasrid Palaces inside, I zeroed in on a drive from Madrid to the province of Andalusia, and after being offered a car from Ford, the trip was a go. I was travelling with my mother and we would cover over 1,300 km in less than a week.
We started in the Spanish Capital of Madrid, which is one of those hidden gems when it comes to travel. Barcelona is quite rightly one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world, in fact, the second most visited city in Europe after Paris. In the northern Basque country, you have the rather picturesque Bilbao and the stunning Guggenheim Museum. But Madrid, the Capital of the country, gets much more press for its football than for the city. The food and wine are spectacular in Madrid, of course, this was the city that churros were invented in and the Chocolateria San Gines close to the centre of the city is a must visit. And Madrid has one of the nicest urban parks in Europe, the Parque Retiro. There are some lovely food stalls in the Anton Martin meat and fish market and some particularly lovely restaurants in that area, but as all tourists should, a visit to Mercado di San Miguel next to the Plaza Mayor is essential. It might feel like a bit of a tourist trap and finding a place to stand can be a challenge but some of the tapas and sangria on offer are excellent.
But it is the city’s museums, particularly the art museums, that you must visit. The Prado, which is celebrating its bicentennial this year, has an amazing collection of medieval and classical art, particularly its collection of Francisco Goya, including the royal portraits, the famous ‘Maja’ but crucially the stunning as well as disturbing ‘Black Paintings’. But the vast Prado Museum, whose size could rival the Louvre in Paris, is outdone by the modern art museum of the city, the Reina Sofia, which has a spectacular collection of works by Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, Juan Gris, and Joan Miro — all Spanish artists, all father figures of modern art. It is in this museum that you finally comprehend just how central Spain and its artists were to modern art. While one might hesitate to call the Reina Sofia ‘better’ than the Orsay in Paris or the Tate in London, it has a grand collection, including Picasso’s amazing Guernica in a massive wing dedicated to art from Spain’s brutal Civil War that preceded the Second World War.
We left Madrid after a quick visit to the Ford Spain office to pick up the Ford Kuga that I would be driving over the next few days. The roads in and around the Spanish Capital are fairly crowded, but using Ford’s SYNC infotainment system, which is also available in their Indian products, I had hooked up my iPhone to the car and started Google Maps through Apple CarPlay. This told me that the 450-odd km to Granada would take me just over four hours. This put me in a bit of a quandary, since it was just 10.30 in the morning and we had informed our apartment host in Granada that we would reach at 4 in the afternoon. The Autovia del Sur did what it said on the label — the motorway to the south. For kilometres on end, through the plains of La Mancha, made famous in Cervantes’ Don Quixote, the road was poker straight with the compass on the map pointed south, albeit of excellent quality and some grand viaducts and tunnels made it obvious that it had recently been upgraded.
Once we crossed into Andalusia, obvious by the sudden appearance of Arabic script in road signs, we switched over to the highway to Granada, called the Autovia Sierra Nevada-Costa Tropical, the road that cut through the Sierra Nevada mountains till the Costa del Sol on Spain’s Mediterranean coast. And if you are confused about the Sierra Nevada mountains being near San Francisco, California, well those Sierra Nevada mountains got their name from these Sierra Nevada mountains.
Granada, whose historic heart is a UNESCO protected zone, was the last Muslim kingdom in Spain to fall after the crowns of Castile and Aragon were merged under Ferdinand II and Isabella. The story of Boabdil, the last Arab (Moor) king of Granada, forms a major plot point in Salman Rushdie’s The Moor’s Last Sigh, and the gain (or loss) of the province of Al-Andalus is critical in understanding European attitudes towards Islam to this day. The story of Islamic Spain is a long one, and not a subject for a travel column but an understanding of history helps. The initial conquest of Spain by the North African Berbers took place in 711, around the same time the first Turkish invaders came to the subcontinent.
And while Islamic architecture reached huge highs in India in Mughal times, the incredible architectural achievements of the Moorish rulers, such as the Alhambra and the Mezquita (Mosque) Cordoba and Seville, are sights to behold. What was also remarkable was that, unlike India, the Islamic rulers were on the whole rather secular in Spain, and both Granada and Cordoba had large Jewish populations. In the aftermath of the Reconquista (reconquest) of Spain is where many believe modern-day anti-semitism was born with Jews being forced out, most Muslims were either forced out of Spain or forced to convert to Catholicism, but clearly looking at modern Spanish, it is clear that many have a mix of genes. Arab culture obviously deeply influenced modern Spain, and many of Spain’s famous and brutal conquistadors of South and Latin America used the same tactics as their Arab forebears and Arab horses.
The Alhambra and the Generalife (Jannat-e-Arif, the architects garden) are on a hilltop overlooking the city of Granada. The historic heart of the city does not allow outside vehicles in, thankfully our host, Juan, had parking in his modern apartment in the ‘new’ city; we were however staying in his apartment in the heart of the old city, right behind the Plaza Nueva. “This building is older than the United States,” Juan joked, but the steep staircase and low wooden tiled ceiling was worth it because the view of the fort from the balcony overlooking the old Arab and Jewish quarters of the city was stunning.
The one thing you should know about the Alhambra and Generalife is that the Spanish conservationists only allow a certain number of visitors every day. A regular entrance ticket costs only 14 Euro but these often get booked out very fast and you will then be forced to join a tour group with a guide where tickets cost upwards of 50 Euro. Thanks to being a bit slow off the blocks, we were forced to take the latter option. At the same time, the number of visitors to the Nasrid Palaces is also restricted, and you can only enter the palaces at the time written on your ticket, and you must be careful with your tickets because you will need to scan them multiple times. But the gardens, now filled with bitter Seville orange trees, are beautiful, and back when they were built, the water engineering and the plumbing to bring the water from the mountains was a massive achievement. It is the oldest surviving Moorish Gardens and while modern gardeners try and make improvements, some of the old skills have clearly been lost.
Of course, the Nasrid palaces are stunning, with their geometric designs and impressive stucco, stone and tile work, which is being slowly restored, but they can get very crowded and a lot of people in a small space meant it would get very warm even in the nice early March weather we were in. Ideally, one would want to admire the palaces a bit slower, but the rush of people can be a bit much. One has to remember that the Alhambra-Generalife is the second most visited site in Spain after the La Sagrada Familia cathedral in Barcelona, and while it is a place that one should indeed visit, you can, as an Indian, get caught up in comparing Indian Islamic architecture to the Alhambra, but the scale and the fact that much of this was built long before the peak of Mughal architecture in India should pique your interest, as well as understanding the history of Islam in the Iberian Peninsula.
There is a lovely Alhambra museum as well, that is attached to the unfinished palace of Charles V — unfinished because of the expulsion of Muslim artisans following the Reconquista. That said, it is remarkable that the Spanish Christian rulers did not demolish the Alhambra and even kept its Islamic nature, with some changes. And although at places you can see the shield of the Spanish crown along with other modifications, much of the ruins are in good condition and surprisingly, you learn that Napoleon destroyed a lot of the city on his Spanish campaigns many centuries later.
From Granada, our plan was to drive down to Cordoba, the erstwhile Capital of the province and then the Caliphate of al-Andalus, but we decided to take a slight detour. After all, most hotels in Europe are fairly strict about early check-ins. So instead of heading due West to Cordoba, we continued down south on the Autovia Costa Tropical and eventually joined the Autovia Mediterrano, the stunning highway that literally hugs the Spanish Costa del Sol (the Sun coast), and there we decided to pull into the lovely small town of Nerja. Here you see the so-called Balcon d’Europa (the Balcony of Europe) and the view from the town is spectacular with the cliffs of the Spanish coast melting into the Azure waters of the Mediterranean. On another trip, this little town would be a great place to stop for a couple of days.
Now we found ourselves needing to move from Nerja via Malaga towards Cordoba. Malaga, the biggest city on the Costa del Sol, looks immense from outside. This stretch of coastline is immensely popular with sun worshippers from northern European countries and it was in the sale of houses and apartments here that the Spanish economic boom started and also eventually crashed. We moved back onto the Autovia del Sur, but heading north this time. Soon after passing the mountains, we hit the rolling landscape around the province of Cordoba, again filled with olive groves as far as the eye can see. That olive oil you use for dressing your salad most likely came from olives grown around here.
Our hotel in Cordoba was on the edge of the Jewish Quarter and a short walk to the famous Mezquita-Catedral of Cordoba. The Mezquita was built by the Caliphs of Cordoba as a grand mosque to rival those in Damascus and Jerusalem. Walking down to the Mezquita, you can see ruins dating back to Roman times; Hispania is where the great Roman, Seneca, came from and there is a statue of him beside the old walls as is a more recent statue of the great Sephardic Jewish philosopher and theologian, Maimonides, in the Jewish Quarter. Much of the historic town of Cordoba is again off-limits for cars but there are several hotels and apartments in the area and you can find several parking spots with municipal parking.
Unfortunately, we had arrived on a Monday and several museums and sites like the Alcazar (Palace) were shut, but it is still a lovely walk to the river’s edge where the old ‘Roman Bridge’ still stands, albeit much modified over the years. Most of the taverns and cafes are open and you can try several local tapas such as Salmojero, a type of gazpacho, which is a cold tomato soup but made with bread with a boiled egg and Spanish ham on top. But the absolute must-have is the berenjas con miel, which is essentially aubergine fritters drizzled with local honey. Alongside local wine, you really do not need to eat too many tapas shared between a couple of people to get full.
We visited the Mezquita the following morning; the tickets are affordable and despite the fact that it remains a functioning Catholic church, the money raised goes towards the continuing restoration of the immense hall with its distinctive double archways. There are several reasons this ‘Mezquita’ is unique, even though it was consecrated as a cathedral after the Reconquista, but the biggest singular achievement is the immense scale of the monument and the fact that it is one of the few extant mosques that have actually survived from that time anywhere in the world. There is a level of controversy to this day because modern Muslims wish to offer prayers in the Mezquita but those attempts have been actively thwarted by the Spanish authorities. Later on, I climbed up the Bell Tower of the Cathedral, which was once the Minaret, with the modern bell tower built over it. This offers a stunning view of the Mezquita-Catedral and you can see where the reconstruction happened as well as the lovely ‘Court of Oranges’ outside.
For the final evening in Spain, we decided to visit Cordoba’s public food market, the Mercado Victoria, on the main road, a few steps from our hotel. Much like the Mercado di San Miguel in Madrid, this has several food stalls selling small food items from slices of Spanish Tortillas (stuffed omelettes) and tapas such as olives. There are some bars attached as well where you can catch a cocktail or two, and if you like Gin, try the lovely Spanish gin from Galicia, Nordes.
The drive back from Cordoba to Madrid was long and uneventful; Spanish roads as mentioned before are spectacular, but traffic does get a bit chaotic as you enter the city of Madrid. Traffic is orderly in Spain, much more so than Italy, for example, so choose your lanes well in advance and using indicators is not an option. On the whole, a driving holiday in Spain is definitely worth it. While the country has a lovely network of buses and trains, as well as affordable low-cost flights, having a car allows you freedom to visit places like Nerja or even the shopping destination of Las Rozas outside Madrid. Driving in the West is much less stressful than in India, as people follow rules and you can easily cover huge distances like the 600 km between Madrid and Barcelona in under six hours. However, the only thing you must keep in mind is that parking is often a challenge in city centres. But a drive through Spain is something that you must add to your bucket list.
