Anti-Austerity Protest in Lisbon

Seems there were anti-austerity protest marches sponsored by trade unions in the southern part of Europe today - Spain, Italy, Greece, and Portugal (also in Paris and Lille but it seems not elsewhere). We learned this from The Guardian after getting home.

We knew it in the first instance from being caught in the demonstration traffic in Lisbon. The other end of town from where we're staying has some good museums, and today we went out there. We had some bad luck yesterday with the tram failing to appear, so this morning when it didn't show we just hopped a cab. Fine.

At 4 pm we piled into another cab to go home, and guess what? Standstill traffic, some main streets closed off. A tidal wave of cars, trucks, cabs, ambulances, tuktuks, motorcycles all trying to get into the same narrow streets. Our lady cab driver became less ladylike. We spent a lot of time breathing exhaust fumes. The cab rocked 3" forward, stop, 3" forward, wait, and so forth. It took a long time.

So we didn't know the problem. But eventually we saw the crowds, the flags. To our interest, many of the demonstrators were middle-aged or older.

Really, we didn't quite know if the demonstration was just getting underway, or just over, or in the process of marching from one place to another. There was movement. Our driver turned on the radio, but got no information, only music. We don't speak Portuguese anyway; she doesn't speak English. She called it a "manifestao." 

Finally, by going well north (or northwest, as Lisbon is laid out on a northwest/southeast axis) she managed to get around the crowds and get us home. It took 3 times as long to come home, as going out had taken (or longer).

We think that Lisbon is still suffering from the crash of 2007. In our neighborhood, lots of empty storefronts. Lots of construction begun but not finished. Lots of seemingly idle working-age people. In the local Mini-Precu (a grocery), people are very careful about their change. At the filling station, a guy whose job is to fill your tank for you, a sort of make-work position. Streets are not very clean or in very good repair. People are dressed in whatever. Building facades would really like some cleaning and repair. The shopping center closest to here is very marginal. 

Well, could be we just landed in an old, downmarket, non-gentrified area. There are more upscale areas. We found ourselves in one yesterday, very busy and pleasant, though so hilly I thought I'd perish from walking up and down. And the museum area has a busy shopping street nearby. Our sample of Lisbon is not scientific. 

Portugal has a rather weak economy, as described in Wikipedia (quoting from The Economist and other sources). There's some corruption and occupational training is most suitable to industrial production. The bureaucracy is notably inefficient and slow. In 2013 unemployment reached above 17%, but now it's down to 12%. The country is very dependent on tourism for income. It's undergoing austerity as recommended by the EU and IMF. So these are not great signs.

Portugal had an election recently in which they chose against austerity, Julianne reminds me. The new government came into power only 3 days ago. It's considered a blow to German-dominated European fiscal policy, even though the new prime minister vows he won't try the Greek defiance route. It's considered a fragile government just now. See this column by Evans-Pritchard in The Guardian.

So being only a tourist and no expert, I have to say our perspective on Portugal has darkened just a little because of seeing this suffering and dissatisfaction. A big outcome from a traffic jam!

by Nancy

Road Trip in Spain, with Olive Trees

Credit: Europehaven.com

This morning we drove from Granada to Cordoba, our next destination in this trip. But it's less than three hours if you go direct, so why go direct? We started for Cordoba going the opposite way from Cordoba. {J says-We just love a road trip.}

The Sierra Nevada is a mountain range just north of Granada. They are the tallest mountains in Spain, rising 3400 meters (over 10,000 feet), and usually capped with snow. The hills of Granada could be called foothills of the Sierra, and we could see the high peaks from our neighborhood of Albaycin. What could be better than a drive up to the ski resort in the Sierra Nevada National Park?

Of course we had to stop for pictures

Such a dry landscape! Such lovely sun!

Spines and needles on most plants.

The rock is so friable it erodes into spikes and spires

We were so interested in the geology, the cracked and shattered hills and gravelly scree. It seemed to be limestone and sandstone in layers, and what we read later agreed. We couldn't really find any descriptions of the rock that were satisfying - either somebody's dissertation overwhelming with detail on a small point, or tourist brochure type descriptions of the "look at the rocks" variety. We had fun poking around in google, though, and picked up a few things, for instance a basement layer that goes back perhaps as far as the Pre-Cambrian.

There wasn't any snow where we were. We stopped for a snack at the ski resort town of Sierra Nevada, which was full of delivery trucks and apparently empty hotels and condos. We could see the lifts and so forth - but not a flake of white stuff. People seemed to be getting ready for hordes to come later. We had read that November is the wettest month in Granada, but we certainly haven't seen even a hint of a cloud. It's an unusually dry year, still hope springs eternal.

No menu del dia today

We drove from the Sierra Nevada National Park straight to Cordoba, stopping only for lunch.

Southern Spain is olive country. Olive trees as far as the eye can see. This picture shows a processing plant with huge silo-looking vats (doubtless for oil), trees close, trees far, trees beyond the reach of vision.



Andalusia, this region, is the world's largest producer of olive oil. We could well believe it!

Julianne reports that during the Roman Empire, 85% of olive oil imported to ancient Rome came from the drainage of the Guadalquivir River. The Guadalquivir starts well north, passes through Cordoba, through Seville, and down a few hundred miles to the sea just north of Cadiz.

We knew this when we were in Rome. Testaccio mountain, a huge hill composed of broken pottery from olive oil jars from Spain, was just across the river from our apartment. It must have been a smelly mess then, but today it's a tourist draw.

So this has been olive country for a very, very long time. And they seem to have the production process down. Fields of old trees, of mature but younger trees, of baby trees. All the ground plowed so no other living thing gets any water that could go to the olives. Processing plants dotted all around.

The picking hasn't started in earnest. We saw occasional teams, tarps spread under the trees, with long poles beating the high branches, or in one case vibrating them somehow. Julianne said that to pick all this many olives that way, they must hire every single able-bodied man in southern Spain and northern Morocco too. Our friend Janet picks her own olives by hand, and we were so impressed - it's actually hard work.

In short this all made us astonished at the labor involved. We have every reason to be grateful every time we use some of this precious oil.

We finally made it to Cordoba. Our hotel is right in the heart of the old city, just near the Guadalquivir River and only a couple blocks from the sights we came to see. Such  narrow one-way streets! I don't have a good picture of the narrowness, because I was totally focused on not scraping the sides of the car on the stone walls. At one point we had to pull in the side-mirrors to make it through. And then when the road widened, it was blocked a different way.

Nothing to do but relax and go real slow.

We struggled through, of course, and just next to our hotel, in a little hole-in-the-wall place, got our reward:  pomegranate and orange smoothies.  Life is looking up, here in Cordoba.

Nancy's reward for really hard driving.

by Nancy, with a couple pictures from Julianne

At home in Granada

We have been in Granada a week and we are sad to leave.  Lucky us to have found a very sweet apartment in the Old City--Albacyn.  This is the oldest part of Granada, predating the Alhambra. Cobbled streets, walled houses built around gardens, plazas with churches and cafes.

Our apartment is within a building that holds several apartments and looks out on a garden.  Our host lived here growing up but the family has clearly updated it for rental to travelers with a modern kitchen, washer, and all the mod cons we require.  Great internet which is such a relief after our long stay in Barbate without it. Yet we are looking out over a walled garden, shuttered windows keep out the morning cool, tile floors and walls make us think we might be medieval inhabitants.

Living room.  We appreciate the internet.

Our balcony looking into the garden. Grape vines in foreground.

We walk up half a block to a small city bus (small enough to get around in tiny streets) which connects us to the main city plaza, university, concert centers.

The C1 bus from Albacyn to Centro.  Costs 1.20 euro.  Runs every 8 minutes from 7 am to 11 pm.

One of our daily decisions is which lovely plaza to go for lunch.  Plaza Larga is a bit of a walk but has flamenco music all day in a tree-filled square.

Musicians getting ready to play.

A few African immigrants trying to get by by hawking. Seem to be from W. Africa, generally.

Old city walls from 12th C., entrance to Plaza Larga

Closer, only a block away is the plaza in front of San Miguel Bajo Church.  Not as many trees but six restaurants offer food and drink beginning at 11.  Today we even had a bit of music.  Guitar players are ubiquitous here.

A young wine from the Granada area.

Plaza San Miguel with church in background.

Our major tourist event was a tour of the Alhambra.  Stunning.  See Nancy's post about it. We did not know anything else before we got here and it is worth coming even if Granada did not turn out to be so wonderful.  We also wandered through the main Cathedral, built by Isabella after the conquest, as Spain became Spain with the final addition of this province.  It is a Renaissance style building--skipping the Gothic entirely.

Music is the other main event in Granada.  Our first introduction to flamenco--turns out we love it and look forward to more in Cordoba and Sevilla.  Our first visit was to La Casa del Arte Flamenco.  We were stunned and overwhelmed with the fine music and dancing.  The main female dancer was an older woman who had so much skill and spirit: Violetta Ruiz.  There was also a male dancer, singer and guitarist-all good.  We are hardly refined critics but all, and especially Violetta, were fantastic performers. Here is a You tube video of her with different supporting cast.

This year is the centenary of Miguel de Falla's famous opera and ballet, El Amor Brujo.  While we are here there is a Miguel de Falla festival and we were able to attend a performance of El Amor Brujo which he composed here but added ballet later in Paris.  It is based on a gypsy story and supposedly the music is based on flamenco.  We could not hear the flamenco but enjoyed the skill of the performers.  It seemed a bit dated to us--Arte Noveau from the early 20th C.  How surprising it was to us to find ourselves thinking that.

Tonight we pack for an early out tomorrow morning.  But will go out for one last flamenco concert a few blocks away.  We will visit the Sierra Nevada Ski Area on our way to Cordoba.  What a great life.

Sierra Nevada from near our house.

Text and photos by Julianne.

Except photo of Violetta Ruiz taken from her publicity shots.

Waters of Granada

The Carmen del Aljibe del Rey is around the corner from our house in the old city of Albacyn.  It turns out to be one of the delightful surprises of wandering around: rarely open but open as we passed by.

It is a "carmen"--a walled house with garden, now restored to its former self as a historical monument to Granada and the history of water management in the old city.  The neighborhood and city were inhabited by Romans, probably also by Phoenicians and Iberians before the Roman rule began in 208 BC.  After Romans, Visigoths who left few traces here.  Arabs entered in 711 and Albacyn was their city--walled, protected with towers.  To the 11th C. the Ziry dynasty reigned and this house was their palace.  The Nazrids defeated them in 1232 and built the Alhambra leaving this area to be a living and market area for common people.

Romans were major managers of water creating irrigation, clean water for fountains in their towns and storage systems.  So were their followers, the Arabs.

The area of Granada is a vast valley with rivers draining from the Sierra Nevada which has snow on it right now.  The Sierra Nevada is about 12,000 feet and captures water as snow, melting it into a series of rivers which water the valley for agriculture and which still provide water supply for the city.  My sources do not say enough about the Roman water systems so I am not that clear whether they had much or little but it is more clear how the Arabs channeled and managed water in their cities.  I think it likely that the bones of the system were Roman and expanded as the population recovered during the middle ages.

The Carmen was definitely a Roman place--pillars and carvings attest to it.  This one dates to "Year 163" but counting from what, I do not know.  Visigoths had a powerful presence in the Iberian peninsula but Granada says little about their presence.  Surely the town continued along but perhaps with little power compared to Toledo and other areas.

The Moslems, Arabs and other, entered in 711 and Albacyn was their city.

They created or resurrected the Roman water system.  Under the Moslem dynasties the Aynadamar system of water channels began near a higher point in the Sierra Nevada and fed fountains, channels and cisterns throughout Albacyn.  The Ziry dynasty were there in the 11th C. before their defeat by the Nazrids in 1232.  Their palace sits atop the largest cistern in the city--we could walk and look inside.  A well in the patio gave access inside the house and a fountain in the public square outside gave water to the public.

This cistern and palace are the high point and the Aynadamar channels water to fountains and cisterns throughout the area.  Finally the water runs into the Durro River which bisects Granada. This fountain in the garden channels water from higher to lower slopes of the carmen itself then out to the Aynadamar.


The Alhambra was built by the incoming Nasrid dynasty on the opposite hill.  They started the Alhambra on the most important defensive point on the western cliff but quickly created an irrigation system beginning at the top of their hill, the Generalife Gardens to capture the flow and gradually moved water throughout the Alhambra as they built it over three centuries.  Their water too flowed into the Durro and out to water the agricultural lands of the valley.

Text and photos by Julianne.
Photo of cistern from AguaGranada Foundation.

A Visit to the Alhambra, Granada, Spain

Wall decoration (detail) from a reception hall, Alhambra

An amazing place, the Alhambra, a riot of decoration and visual astonishment. Designed to impress, the product of centuries of artisans beavering away in royal workshops.

We had a hard time getting tickets, and eventually signed up for a tour. We were happy with Oscar, (Bookyourtour.com), who kept us moving. This was a good thing, because otherwise we might have been paralyzed with dazzlement. 

Do I exaggerate? The Alhambra is really big, and we saw only part of it in terms of ground covered. A lot of the hilltop where the Alhambra is situated is really archaeological excavations, and some of it is no more than foundations in this latter day. Here is a copy of the map - zoom in for closer detail:

That central group of buildings with red roofs is where we went (#20-31 on the map). The Nasrid Palaces. Omit from consideration the large square with a cirular space - it's much later, by Charles V.

The Nasrid dynasty took Granada in 1232 from an earlier Islamic dynasty (Moslems had arrived in Spain in the year 711). Mohammed I al-Ahmar started with the fortress at the tip of the hill in 1238, and from then on Yusufs, Ismails, and Mohammads built and built, until at last Mohammad XII Boabdil was conquered in 1492 by Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. Five hundred years later, some things have changed, but a lot of the early intentions of the Nasrids are still visible.

Our path through the Alhambra basically followed the dotted line on the map until we doubled back for a break after a few hours and ended up bagging the rest of the tour and going to lunch instead. 

Dear reader, it was easy to get lost! Progressing from room to room, from decoration to decoration, each more over-the-top than the last, I had a hard time keeping the functions of the rooms straight. 

Well, that's me - Julianne is probably better at purpose while I wander off to look at curlicues. Let me make a bit of an outline. 

The Nasrids had three basic areas of activity: justice, politics, and living quarters. The halls of justice are gone, though one tower remains (#61 on the map). Their mosques are also gone though the foundation of one is still visible, offset from the other buildings because it faces Mecca. On the map, it's close to #20. 

The public reception halls and throne rooms seem to occupy #20-23, and maybe more. Here are some pictures from that part of the Alhambra.

Gate to the early fortress, 13th century

Gate to the Nasrid palaces, 14th century

Frieze around the top of a wall

Ceiling detail, pieced wood

One thing I eventually came to notice about these decorations is that the design work takes some advantages of angles, squares, and straight lines. There is also a lot of attention to the name of the Nasrid dynasty, according to our guide. Here is an example:

The Arabic lettering repeats the name of the dynasty over and over

If you glance back at the image at the top of this post, and at the image of the Nasrid entrance gate, you'll see other examples of the dynasty name. Here's some more carving that depends on Arabic:

We've moved on to the family quarters now

 You clearly get the idea that the surface decoration of the Alhambra is overwhelming. It's not all geometric, by any means. Especially in the harem, or family quarters, there are lots of leaf-and-flower forms, arabesques, curlicues.

But by now, dear reader, you are probably totally tired of surfaces, and wishing you could learn something about how people actually lived in these palaces. This was not visible to us, generally speaking, though of course we already knew that men and women lived separate lives in separate spaces.

We really found out nothing about what people ate, how children were educated, how long people lived, or how jobs were distributed. The empty spaces told us little, and the guide said nothing about these things.

We did hear about the importance of water.

In dry climates, water is a focus of power and beauty. There are some beautiful fountains, and gardens, in the Alhambra. Here's a sample:

There's also a sense of enclosure, of protection, of turning away from the outside to focus on the interior. One is screened from the rest of the world. This might have something to do with climate, or we can speculate it could be related to an unavoidable uneasiness at the heart of power. I might be taking that too far.

No matter. Clearly the inside is the focus, and the building turns a blind face to the outside world, while ornamenting the interior within an inch of its life. Consider arches and domes. A little book I bought (Islamic Design, by Daud Sutton, Wooden Books, 2007) names these stalactite forms muqarnas, and says they cover domes and archways as architectural devices to spread load and make transitions between round and square forms. As well as present imagery of celestial light condensing into matter. They're quite fantastic, and we saw many examples in the Alhambra:

We've seen this icicle-like decoration in Istanbul and Damascus, among other places, but this is some kind of pinnacle, a confection beyond what we've seen before. Quite astonishing, and we were astonished, and then we went to lunch.

I had warm goat cheese and quince jam grilled on slices of toast. Ah. Julianne had a sandwich which she describes as tasty but not special. Then I went to look at the other architectural style in this complex, early Renaissance, Charles V's palace from the 16th century. Much plainer. Austere, even. Clearly a very different way of thinking was involved:

With this building, we are in a recognizably modern world. 

by Nancy