The Moor's Last Sigh

The chair across from me was occupied by a man in his early 40s; short-cropped dark hair and a very old-fashioned suit were all I can really remember about him. A muscular, white cat sat in his lap and, though it did not seem to mind being petted, it did not purr, nor did its large eyes suggest any awareness of the man's affection.

"Don't mind Mitzekatze," the man said, "he's been funny in the head ever since he fell off the roof."

But that's a story for later on.

Mr Irving, as I was advised to call him, had lived in Granada for the past year, occupying a studio space in the picturesque Nazirid Palace section of the Alhambra. An American diplomat, Irving took leave from business in Madrid to travel through Andalucia. Something about Granada had captured his imagination, so it was here that he'd settled and where we were currently chatting.

"There's a shadow hanging over this city," he said, gesturing towards the white-toothed hills of the Alybacin.

"1492 was a very big year for Spain, you see. While Columbus was busy discovering the New World (though let's not remind anyone here that he was Italian), the Catholic kings were equally successful in driving the Moors out of Spain once and for all. The last sultan to have made his home here, Boabdil, left Alhambra and Granada in disgrace, but it is said that he turned back - at the final point, just before his beloved red fort vanished beneath the horizon - and let out an awful sigh as he watched the Christian cross be erected atop his beloved palace."

That moment entered legend as 'the moor's last sigh'.

Mitzekatze leapt off Irving's lap as the latter arose and gestured that I follow him to the window. From its arabic arch I could see the irregular lattice of tiny streets, woven and criss-crossing amongst teahouses, shishah dens and market stalls. Locals passed through the thronging touts with practised ease, but camera-laden tourists found themsevlves bogged down and press-ganged by skillful charlatans.

Most talented of all were the Gypsy women, who waved sprigs of rosemary at passers-by and, if ever anyone responded, would press the herb deep into their victim's palm.

"Oh, you will have a handsome husband, he will be rich, very rich, and oh so many children shall you have," the women cooed to their prey, then, "now, you give me twenty euros".

Irving shook his head, smiling at the gullibility of his fellow citizens.

"They are seduced by the legends, by the mystique of the Orient," he said, returning to his seat (Mitzekatze was busy pooing in a nearby pot plant), "but there are other, more modern tales to be found in this part of the world."

I'd arrived in Granada two days earlier, where the sun actually felt like something that heated billions of humans from millions of miles away. Unlike Barcelona, this city is small, and I found its streets cosy and filled with dog faeces. Thankfully, Bianca had phoned her local friends ahead of my arrival, so I was woken up by a cheery text message informing me of plans for the evening.

My bed at that point was a ledge above a toilet in the overbooked hostel I'd arranged a day earlier. With a mattress barely wider than my body, and an ancient pair of rotten socks nestled in a crack near my head (karma, perhaps?), I was struggling to find the deep, mid-afternoon siesta that my body craved, which meant that the buzzing of my phone didn't so much wake me up as it gave me an excuse to open my eyes.

Emily, Bianca's friend, was taking me out to tapas, followed by something called a "botellon". The first part of the night was fairly straight forward: Granada is renowned for its tapas because, unlike the rest of Spain, every bar serves you the tapas free with your drink. A lot of places actually insist upon your loyalty by staggering the quality of the tapas, so that the more you drink, the better your food. Locals will start their nights out at the bars with the more generous portions, before ending at the nicer, but stingier joints later on.

With a nice dollop of food in our bellies, our group multiplied when we arrived at a nearby park to meet some more locals. I was introduced to a Spaniard by the name of Alberto who told me that I'd have to pay one euro if I wanted to drink. Not quite sure what was happening, I gave him the money, and our entire party made off into the old quarter of the city, climbing up cobbled mountains until we arrived at an old Moorish monument.

This is where I learnt that 'botellon' means 'drinking on the street'.

It was only one of Granada's odd rituals however, as part-way through our session, we were interrupted by the arrival of yet another strange local custom: the midnight tour group.

A horde of Spanish students climbed up the mountain, led by their guide, and stopped right in front of us. Without batting an eyelid, the tour guide gabbled away to his followers, telling them all about the important historical value of the steps we were sitting on. People nodded, took notes in their books and then continued walking down the street.

Twenty minutes later some local kids started chucking rocks at us, so we decided to leave.

Unfortunately it was not too much later that I found myself sitting in a cafe having breakfast. I had three missions for the day ahead: change hostels, discover some examples of good graffiti and explore the Alybacin.

Mission one was taken care of fairly quickly. I'd already booked into the Oasis, a very cosy establishment right in the heart of the old quarter, so I was soon showered and presentable. Mission two was sorted out over breakfast - the women behind the bar of the cafe looked like the kind of person who knew all about graffiti. She did, and with the help of my new companion, Ida, told me where I could find some amazing examples. Mission three was also achieved with the help of Ida, who'd befriended a local boy last night and, in a bid to woo her, he'd agreed to give her a tour of the historical areas in the city.

If you're interested in street art, Granada is definitely a city to mark on your itinerary. It is impossible not find amazing artwork on the walls of this city; every corner will reveal a new plaster canvas. But, a must-see is definitely a section somewhere in the barrio of Realjo, just to the south-east of the Alybacin. Here I found, and photographed profusely, houses and walls covered in what looked like brush-stroked portraits.

The artist is known only as 'el niño de las pinturas' - the kid of the paintings (and his website is here: http://www.elninodelaspinturas.com/). Ask anyone, they'll be able to tell you where it is.

Exhausted after a long day of walking and photographs, I bid Ida and Isaac (the local boy) farewell, leaving them behind in a shishah bar. I thought that it was time to have an early night, but the Oasis would prove to have other plans in mind.

Skipping through a tapas pub crawl and a live-music club where even the band's line-up was improvised, I found myself in an ex-bordello somewhere in the city, sharing a bottle of wine with Jess, a German-American 'army brat' and Natalia, an exchange student from Melbourne. This was also where I met Mitzekatze.

"I don't think he even had a name before I got here," Natalia said, "but he's totally crazy. The love of his life lives outside of the building, but there's this little window that she goes up to, and the two of them will sit there for hours, looking at eachother.

"Once, years ago, she was allowed in here, but for some reason was banished outside. That was when Mitzekatze first tried to commit suicide. He leapt from the top floor of this building - a three-storey drop, but somehow he survived. Hasn't been the same since."

As if on cue, Mitzekatze's focus snapped onto something in the shadows behind me and he bounded away into the darkness.

"I think he can see ghosts," Jess said, giggling between purple-stained teeth.

It was getting late, so late in fact that Natalia's features occasionally blurred into those of a middle-aged man in an outfit far too old for our modern times.

"Make sure you see the Alcazar when you're next in Seville," Mr Irving said as I stood to leave, "the building isn't anywhere near as gorgeous as the Alhambra, but the gardens will strike you down."

I would remember this recommendation, days later, while walking through the gardens of the Alcazar with Phil and Sean. The two boys were traveling around Europe and trying to survive on twenty euros a day. That included transport, which meant that a lot of the time they'd sleep on park benches and face 24 hours without food. Despite all this, the tales of the gardens' beauty had led them to pay the eight euro entry fee without a question.

"Thank you, I'll definitely check them out," I said.

With a simple, civil nod, Mr Irving reached out and shook my hand. Our farewells concluded, I closed my book - Tales from the Alhambra by Washington Irving - and turned to look out the plane window where Andalucia, the Sierra Nevada, and even Galicia's verdure had long vanished, replaced with the lush patchwork of French farms. Ireland, Andrea and weeks of rest now lay only an hour away.

It's no surprise then that my final farewell to Spain came in the form of a relaxed sigh.