The Spanish Town

Sitting on a pavement bench and watching the passing parade has long been one of the leisurely joys of civilized living. However, with the introduction of the car and the ubiquitous bitumen, people-watching on western boulevards often comes with a disturbing dose of noise and fumes.

This is not the case in the old towns and villages of Europe, where the Roman town plan is still predominant. Incorporating a closed complex of car-free laneways and plaza´s, it provides places for the population to enjoy a community lifestyle.

Vilanova i la Geltru, a Catalan port town an hour south of Barcelona, has a town plan that includes all of the classic features of European cities: a central “Rambla Principal” running from the oldest and largest church in the centre of town down to the port; an “old city” (the “Geltru” of the town´s name), many closely interlaced lanes, some with shops and restaurants and others solely residential, and occasional plaza´s and squares, attractively paved and often with fountains, either as centre pieces or simply for drinking water.

Whiling away the hours in the cool of the evening during the summer, observing the effect on the culture of these car-free rambla´s and plaza´s, I came to see the genius of this style of city plan. In Australia, community living occurs in designated places that are more activity centred: the sports ground, the park, the beach, or the church, are some examples. The town plan is based on suburbs with relatively large, free standing houses, situated along relatively wide streets along which fast moving cars frequently pass. Hence cultural life inevitably centres more in the house, especially if the house has a patio and a back yard.

There is not the same opportunity for regular, casual, or serendipitous meetings of fellow townspeople as there is if you live in a relatively small apartment above a safe and pleasant plaza, which might also include a couple of bars and cafes in which to partake of a snack and a drink with friends.

The essential difference is that a plan inspired by the walled village of the Roman and medieval periods manifests in a town whereby there is an inversion of the new world´s conception of inside and outside. In Spain the village itself is an edifice. The plaza below your window is like a large common room, a secure, closed environment with a leafy canopy for a ceiling, having as its furniture not only bench seats but groups of single chairs fixed to the pavement in a haphazard manner, as if a group of friends each pulled up a chair in a café or pub. In these plaza´s you are in a sense still “inside”.

Like a lounge room, it is protected and intimate, walled on all sides by apartment blocks, with doors represented by lane ways leading off to other plaza´s. Being so important a space in the daily lives of the citizens, a lot of attention and work is put into the “interior design” of the plaza´s. The patterned tiled pavements, magnificent facades of fronting apartment buildings, often modernist or Art Nouveau, creative ironwork balconies like laced curtains, centre piece statutes and fountains, and small trees like interior potted plants, all reminiscent of a covered interior courtyard.

And so you have the town built to accommodate the immediate human needs of a community: the rambla for leisurely exercise, outdoor café´s for a snack or a drink, and the various squares and plaza´s to sit and watch the passing parade, or to socialise with companions. It is often more likely that your small apartment will be for audio-visual entertainment and sleeping, with your cultural and dietary needs being met in the plaza below.

The Alhambra

In 711 Moslem armies invaded and occupied the Iberian Peninsular. Over the following centuries their rulers would battle not only the Christian Spaniards but each other. Eventually, there remained one group, the Nasrids, who would dominate the Andalusian region from their famed citadel built on a rocky spur overlooking Granada. This system of palaces and fortifications, contained within a walled city and known as the Alhambra, was built by the Nasrid Caliphs and their Vizers, state administrators who were also known to practice other arts and crafts such as poetry and geometry.

The Alhambra contains some of the most beautiful buildings in the world. With its unusually located palaces, courtyards and gardens forming a magical unity within its walled compound, this is a place to be dazzled.

The architecture of the Alhambra is unique in that there is an interconnectedness that is difficult to decipher. Different palaces, although contiguous, are situated on different axes, alleyways and passages surprise as they appear and wind their way in unexpected directions, now taking a right turn, now going up a stair, always to arrive in another of the astonishing rooms, halls or courtyards of this magnificent palatine complex.

The Alhambra consists of a great number of architectural forms: there are the palaces where domes crown ceilings and cupolas indent walls; halls flow into internal courtyards that contain intricate tile work and stucco patterns on their internal fascia; and stairs lead to upper belvederes that have rustic vista’s to the marvelous gardens. There is an amazing intimate internality in this place, as antechambers lead to halls which open onto loggia containing refreshing pools, mini aqueducts running along the paved floor with water features and fountains taking centre place.

One seems to be entering a room because it has the intimacy of a room, and yet strangely, the proportions of a place of larger significance; it is in fact the Hall of the Kings, a magnificent chamber, and yet still a room.

To enter this mysterious room and behold the effect of ten’s of thousands of pieces of tile, stucco, wood and stone fashioned into a multitude of patterns and shapes of great variation, of arabesques and filigree, of vegetal motifs, of domes and three dimensional plaster shapes built into architraves and ceilings giving the impression of honeycomb and stalactites, a mesmerizing fantasy of medieval craft; and all this capturing light from the window and reflecting and refracting it into a floating whole so that there is a beautiful diffuse softness playing on the patterns and architectural features.

This room then flows seamlessly out into a courtyard where there is no recognizable distinction between the inside and the outside as the court is enclosed, itself with the same universal and seemingly endless geometric tile patterns and calligraphy depicting poetry and verses from the Koran, all above a rectilinear pool, itself enlarging and aestheticising the buildings, incorporated as all elements into the magical unity of this startlingly complex work of art.

The microscopic and multitudinous are as equally powerful as the singular and monumental in the quest for the infinite. And so the sublime pattern repetition and the endless, intricate and subtle variation of forms that constitute the Alhambra brings one to mind of the Mandelbrot set, a firmament encompassing life itself; quite simply, the myriad decorations and ornamentation of the Alhambra provoke astonishment.

The phenomenal effect of this artistry on the human spirit raises the question as to the intention of the architects in producing such an extravagant and breathtaking universe of geometrical design. The history of the Alhambra is nothing if not mysterious and there are scant direct records of the Nasrid Caliphs who built it, or any documents regarding the buildings themselves. So the books written on these fairytale palaces consist mostly of rational speculation and deductions from other sources.

One such speculation has it that the buildings are, amongst other things, a testimony to the influence of Sufism, a mystical form of Islam that proffers that the evidence of God and the sense of the infinite can be found in things of beauty. If the feeling of rapture that the Alhambra can inspire is anything to go by then it could well be accepted that the quest for the infinite may well be on a polychromatic tiled path through its labyrinthine interior.

The desire of human societies to build phenomenal edifices has been long thought to be a search for the absolute. To build a thing of such beauty and magnificence that it leaves the populace awestruck and confident of the authority of its rulers, both secular and religious. Whilst also being a tribute to the vision of the Muslim Sultans and the cultural achievements of their time, a building like this provided an opportunity for architects and artisans to build what can only be described as magnificent works of art. The architectural decoration of the Alhambra in Granada is a testimony to this.

When confronted with the Alhambra, one is awestruck. The emotional impact of the experience causes one to be transfixed, to be rendered immobile, to gaze blankly, to obliterate all other thoughts, to feel that one is, indeed, staring into infinity. Down through the centuries, people gazing upon the works here, have been given to rhapsodic outbursts, inspired to compose euphoric poetry, to write romantic prose and left in philosophic rumination.

Not having any forewarning of the magnificence I was about to encounter I walking through the gate unaware and innocent. I fell into a mysterious universe, “The Red Fortress”, the Alhambra, and was lost for several hours before I came to my senses and only committed to leave in the knowledge that I would be back the next day to let that place again draw away my thoughts, my psychic energy, and leave me affected to the core of my being.

To say I was innocent when I happened upon the Alhambra is bourn out by the state I was in seven hours later when I fell stunned through the Gate of Justice and sank into a swarthy twilit Granada. Oh Alhambra! What I have seen with these eyes!

I crawled into a cavernous Arabic eating house off the side of a crooked allay on the opposite hill. After eating shaslick, bread and homus I drew deeply on a Hooker, laid back on a silk-woven cushion, and reflected on the patterned cosmos plateaued in the distance.

The Dogs of Les Roquetes

The dogs of Les Roquetes howl more than they bark. One of them wakes up at about seven and starts the rest off. It´s the wolf in them. They get into a pack and and have a doggy Back to Nature session; "Once we were hunters".  But they are just a bunch of domesticated muts who don´t really know why they are howling.   It just feels good.