AND ANOTHER THING
Memories of Old Granada in the new Eurowonderland
PAUL JOHNSON
When I first visited Granada in the winter of 1950-51, it was veiled in snow. I froze while I sat painting the Generalife, surely the most beautiful garden on the Continent, quite magical under its rimy blanket, but damnably cold. The blizzard had been dramatic and the authorities had foolishly granted the students a holiday. They congregated on the walls of the Alhambra, then an almost unsupervised warren, and made stockpiles of enormous snowballs for hurling down. As we passed under the Great Gate, an icy missile exploded on our heads and the lady in our party was stunned. We complained. In due course a letter, written I think on parch- ment, arrived from the Governor. Its baroque, nay rococo, phraseology of abase- ment, in superb clerkly script, made it the most elaborate apology I have even seen. As the lady said, 'It was worth getting hit to receive a penitential epistle like that.' It summed up Old Spain to me: dignified, courteous to a fault, ornate, noble in its sentiments, grand in its execution. There was even a characteristic hint of the iron hand beneath the velvet glove: 'The delin- quents', it said, would be 'the object of exemplary punishment'.
I thought of this episode, and of Grana- da in its marmoreal white, when I was there last weekend for the annual Anglo-Hispan- ic meeting. The city, next to Venice the most beatific in Europe, was quite different now: glittering blue skies as the morning mist cleared, enrapturing autumnal tints in its splendid trees, the matchless monu- ments cleaned up, stripped down, carefully ticketed and guarded and explained and Europhied. But the Spanish grandees and every good Spanish caballero is a grandee — and the gracious ladies were the same: still noble, dignified, their instinctive, initial remoteness gradually dis- persing like the mist into sunny smiles that reflect their kind and generous hearts. I quite fell in love with their minister of edu- cation, a creature whose glamour and charm are matched by opinions on all sub- jects of stunning Thatcherite rectitude. What a woman!
The Nasrid sultans of Granada, who reigned from the early 13th century until they capitulated to Queen Isabella of Castile and King Ferdinand of Aragon in 1492, illustrate the sad historical maxim: rulers who love beauty and possess exquisite taste are seldom good at their real job, the exercise of power. As the last sul- tan surrendered his jewel-like capital, the summation of Islamic art at its most sensi- tive and thoughtful, his tears fell copiously, provoking his contemptuous Spanish mis- tress to spit at him, 'You weep like a woman for the loss of what you are not man enough to defend.' But that remark, recounted with relish by the Conquista- dores, was not enough to save her; they put her to death all the same, as a shameless daughter of Spain who had prostituted her- self to the infidel. Now all passion is spent, and the Moorish Court of the Lions and the Renaissance palace of Charles V have alike capitulated to the emotional and spiri- tual vacancy of mass tourism.
We were treated like monarchs, meeting in Charles's grand palace, a circle within a square, and in neighbouring towers and courts and gardens. My group congregated in a spectacular Art Nouveau mansion which clings to the hillside, with its tinkling fountains and long vistas of cypresses and still water and its dazzling art collection it can only be described as the Alhambra redesigned by Charles Rennie Mackintosh. We dined one night in the refectory of the Renaissance monastery of Saint Jerome, conceived by the great Diego Siloe, and on another in the even more spectacular Monasterio de los Cartujos, with the sweet little Carthusian nuns peeping at us from their balcony. On both occasions, the stern stone pulpitum, built high into the wall, was made use of for speeches, notably by the Prince of Darkness himself, who from his lofty clerical perch looked as if he was born to preach — the gospel of the single cur- rency, of course. In his sacramental grandeur, Mr Mandelson reminded me of an early follower of St Francis of Loyola, earnest, unsmiling and passionately anxious to be absolutely on-message, carrying his Eurogod to the Indies.
The visit was crowned by a characteristic Spanish gesture, remarkable alike for its munificence and taste — the production, in a limited edition of 400 copies, of a special- ly written and printed volume about the places in which we met. It is compiled by scholars, superbly illustrated, with a painted frontispiece of memorable beauty, the typography pure and elegant, the printing clean and exact, and the binding of perfect simplicity. It is something to treasure, as an example of the princely way in which the Spanish do these things.
The most solemn moment for me came on Saturday evening, when the Archbishop of Granada asked me to play a small part in the special mass he had organised for our visit. To be exact, the mass also marked the 400th anniversary of the death of Philip II, that great and haunted man who was once King of England but who failed to conquer it. His centenary has been brilliantly noted, I am glad to say, by some of our most gifted historians. We were treated to a perfor- mance of the mass Pro Victoria, written by one of Spain's finest composers, Tomas- Luis de Victoria (1548-1611), a favourite of pious and austere Philip, and to a high mass concelebrated with matchless Spanish decorum by the archbishop and five of his cathedral colleagues. Huge clouds of incense billowed from the altar — the arch- bishop, though small, is a vigorous energis- er of the thurible.
The cathedral, masterpiece of Silo& was the first great Renaissance church built in Spain, and became the model for cathe- drals erected throughout the peninsula and in Spanish America. It is very grand indeed, though not grandiose — there is a note of Spanish austerity even in its immensities. It is made even more regally Hispanic by the adjoining chapel, beneath which Queen Isabella and her kinglY spouse lie buried in simple lead coffins for all to see, her magnificent collection of devotional paintings surrounding their sculpted marble tomb above. So it was a memorable moment, as one of my Spanish friends pointed out, to see so many British and Spanish Cabinet ministers kneeling in the front row of this glorious but imperish- ably Catholic edifice. I was asked to compose and read a special prayer for Spain and Britain, and did so, feeling it a rare privilege thus to offer thanks to Almighty God in such a setting and before such a packed and in places prickly congregation. But all went well, the mons- ters, Presbyterians and atheists alike, pro- nounced themselves edified, and we left to dine sumptuously where once humble monks had eaten their frugal suppers. Spain, which I first knew as a poor country, is now rich, or comparatively so; and where it was once fiercely independent it is now strident- ly pro-European. But its old Catholic heart still beats strongly, Deo gratias.
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