A Tale of The Alhambra: Moonlight, The Moorish Baths & A Cigarette Lighter

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by Gerry Dawes ©2013

In the depths of La Alhambra, Robert struck the flint wheel of the Zippo lighter his uncle had given him when he left for his Navy tour-of-duty in Spain. In the lighter's flame, the walls of the old Moorish baths were bathed in a warm glow and the water in the bathing basins reflected the flickering yellow light. With the glow of the light, Robert, Julia, and Paul Andrews, a Baltimore doctor touring Spain, momentarily lost the spooky sensations they had been feeling as they stood in darkness, which was pierced only by the filtered light of the full moon as it passed through the glass covering the small eight-pointed star-shaped skylights of the 14th-Century baths.

Adding to the escalofriante (spine-tingling) air of being down in this old place, at night, in the dark, was the fact that what they were doing was totally illegal and they were doing it in national monument in Generalisimo Franco's Spain. And they were lighting their way only by a cigarette lighter, which quickly got too hot to hold, and was running low on fluid. Robert gingerly flipped the top on the lighter and light went out. Juggling it in his hands he laid it on the edge of one of the baths to cool.

It might have been spooky down there, but, what an adventure they were having, clandestinely exploring sections of the Alhambra that were closed to the public at night! Along the way, before they had reached the baths, they had stood in the shadows, watching as a few people shuffled through the lighted sections that had been approved for the night tour.

It was a wonderful May night. The sky was clear and there was a full moon. The cool blue-white moonlight washed over the old Nasrid fortress, which takes up a whole ridge above the magical old city of Granada. Someone had told Paul that sometimes you could still hear nightingales singing in the Alhambra on nights of the full moon. "Maybe you will be lucky and hear them," the man had said, "they don't like pollution; it is believed that the exhaust from automobiles is driving them away."

Most of the tourists who visited La Alhambra during the day either didn't realize this was one of the two nights per week that the Alhambra was open or they simply did not want to trek back up the hill after touring all day. So, Robert, Julia, and Dr. Paul were sharing the grounds and palaces of this fantastic old Moorish stronghold with at most 20 other people and just a few guards who tended to move around as the main body of tourists moved through. 

At one point in the Hall of the Ambassadors, Robert, who was familiar with the layout of the Alhambra, noticed that they were the only people in that section. He looked around for the guards and saw no one. "Follow me," he whispered to the others and moved a short white wooden picket fence-like barrier that was the only thing blocking anyone from entering the closed off areas of this magical palace. "If anyone sees us, act lost and speak only in English," he told Julia and Paul. "Pretend to be grateful that they have found us."

They crept quietly, treading carefully, walking Indian-like along the passageways, keeping to the shadows when they spotted a tourist or a guard in the lighted sections across a courtyard, whose fountains still bubbled in the night, splashing and gurgling, making the same sounds they did when this remarkable place was inhabited by the Moors back in the 14th and 15th centuries. Always in these Moorish places, there was water, the most prized liquid in world to the desert-rooted Moor. They built man-made oasises into their palaces and the sound of water was an unbroken link to the past, like music from a bygone era. There were the fountains like the one in the Court of the Lions and there were long, deep pools for ornamentation--now with goldfish--and for bathing. The pools were surrounded with hedges and palm trees. This place must have been a paradise on earth for the Moorish ruling class.

And, now Robert, Julia, and Paul had it to themselves. Robert wished that just he and Julia were sharing this magical night. Had they been alone, perhaps, on one of the benches in the Moorish baths with just the shafts of moonlight shining on them, they could have--and probably would have. . .

The sound of footsteps brought Robert out of his momentary fantasy and they saw a the glow of a light coming from around the corner at the end of the passageway to the right. Someone, probably a security guard, was coming. "Let's get out of here," Robert whispered.

Now Robert hoped he could quickly find his way back to an area where they could casually stroll around a corner into a lighted area, blend in with some of the other people and drift on out of the Alhambra, having pulled off a spectacular romantic coup, a tale that with retelling would ripen into vintage nostalgia.

They felt their way along the tunnel-like corridors, sometimes in near darkness, sometimes in filtered moonlight. At one point, it was so dark that Robert reached for his lighter, but realized he no longer had it. He must have left it at the bath, when he put it down to cool.

"Damn it," he thought, "the only thing I can do is come back in the morning, get in line early, pay another admission, and see if I can get back to the baths to retrieve it before some one finds it."

At last, feeling their way along the wall, they came to some steps that they hoped would lead them back to a place where they could blend in again in the legal zones of palace.

At the top of the stairs, Robert, stopped. "Stop! Freeze!," he whispered in the direction of Julia and Paul. "Don't make a sound." 

They listened, but heard no footsteps and saw no light. Perhaps the guard had just been checking the baths, saw no one and went back the way he had come.

Then they all heard something else. They remained still and heard it again. It was the sweet song of the nightingale on a night of the full moon in the Alhambra of Granada and they had a truly magical element to add to the tale of their night in the old Moorish fortress.

At the top of the stairs was a place that Robert knew. He silently removed the little wooden barrier and they passed back into the legal areas. Robert put his hands in his pockets and they strolled through a filigree doorway and into a lighted, arabesque-adorned hall. A guard motioned for them to hurry, it was closing time. He ushered them along towards an exit to the public grounds outside. As they rounded the corner of Palacio de Carlos V, a big, square, blocky building that was as incongruous in this graceful place as a sumo wrestler dancing a Swan Lake ballet, a flashlight-toting guard came up behind them.

"Señores, perdonen," he said, "?Es de ustedes?" He asked, holding a Zippo lighter with Robert's initials on it.

"No," Robert said, "No fumo (I don't smoke)."

"Pues, nada," said the guard, and they walked away.

The guard flipped open the Zippo, lit a cigarette and inhaled a puff from the black Spanish Ducado cigarette and, grinning, watched Robert, Julia and Paul disappear into the night.

- The End -

Gerry Dawes©2017
gerrydawes@aol.com

Spanish Spirits to Warm Your Soul at the Gran Café 'El Suizo' in Granada

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by Gerry Dawes©2011

There used to be a wonderful old bar called the Gran Café Granada, located in the center of that great old Moorish city in Southern Spain. The Gran Café, known to generations of granadinos as "El Suizo," was near an equally wonderful old hotel, the Victoria, where I used to stay when I lived in Spain and would go periodically to Granada to visit the magical Alhambra and the gardens of the Generalife; the Cathedral's Royal Chapel to see the tombs of Isabel and Ferdinand and their daughter and son-in-law, Juana la Loca and Phillip the Fair; and the Sacristy, just off the Royal Chapel, where I was smitten with the exquisite beauty of Queen Isabela's superb, once-lost collection of Flemish masterpieces by Van der Weyden, Memling, and Bouts.

The Hotel Victoria disappeared some years ago, along with the slightly naughty Victorian cartoons on the walls of its bar, but El Suizo "hung on" until it was demolished for a department store, an apartment building, or God knows what. El Suizo was one of those big, bright places with lots of big mirrors, columns holding up the tall ceilings, and marble-topped, wrought-iron tables; it was like those clean, well-lighted places that Hemingway used to write about.


El Suizo had journeyman waiters with white jackets who would warm your brandy glasses for you on cold nights in February, when even the palm trees and olive groves up on the the fabled Alhambra hill would be dusted with new snow blown down from the Sierra Nevadas that tower majestically over the landscape south of town. Nothing much could ever warm your feet in Andalucia in the winter in those days; the Andalucians just simply refused to acknowledge that cold was a factor in these Southern climes, so public places (and most private ones, too), lacked central heating. But, you could heat your insides with a good shot of Spanish brandy, especially when it was warmed for you like it was by the waiters at the El Suizo.


On this occasion, a well-heeled friend from America was inviting us to the best, so we each chose a different top-of-the-line Jerez brandy to compare. We ordered the smooth, well-balanced Carlos I (Primero) from Domecq, the paler, elegant Lepanto from Gonzalez-Byass, and the dark velvety Gran Duque de Alba.


Our waiter at the El Suizo came to our table bearing a tray with steaming demi-tasse cups of strong, black Spanish café, and three brandy snifters filled with piping hot water, each topped with a cloth napkin. The waiter took the snifters one at a time, removed its napkin, poured off the hot water into metal pitcher, and carefully dried each glass. Then he poured a generous ration of the brandy, re-covered each snifter with a napkin, and placed them in front of us to allow the warming aromas to build to a crescendo.


I had chosen the Gran Duque. As I removed the napkin from the heated glass, the exotic aroma-laden vapors rushed out with a promise of warmth that one sip of the lush brandy soon delivered. And, although those latter-day saints, the perfectionists who continually dissect the fine art of drinking, will tell you that you are not supposed to do this to fine spirits, I will tell you that none but a Philistine could resist the ritual warming of the brandy at El Suizo on a winter's night in Granada.


The Solera Gran Reserva Brandy de Jerez denominación de origen was created to protect the sales domain of the big Sherry producers who make this fine stuff, and also to find a good excuse to promote the brandies, since the sale of spirits is vitally important to many Sherry bodegas. The denominación especifica (DE), or specific denomination, Brandy de Jerez refers as much to the method of elaboration as it does to region since most of the wine distilled for use in Jerez brandies comes from La Mancha and Extremadura, although, obviously, the brandy must be aged in Jerez to qualify for this new denominación. And it should be remembered that Brandy de Jerez does not include any of the superb Charentais-method brandies of Cataluña, nor any of the other brandies of Spain.


In Spain practically every hotel, restaurant, and bar carries a broad selection of Spanish brandies ranging from inexpensive styles made by the continuous distillation process to expensive brands produced by long solera aging and/or the French Charentais (pot-still) process. Although brandy is produced all across Spain, it is the big sherry producers of Jerez who account for the majority of Spanish brandies, and it is their brands that you are most likely to encounter both in Spain and abroad. The unique qualities of Jerez brandies come from being aged in the solera system like sherry, which not only guarantees a continuity of quality and style, it allows the young brandy to assume the characteristics of the older, more mature, stocks.


The best Jerez brandies, ranked by many experts alongside French cognac and armagnac as the top brandies in the world, are now called Solera Gran Reserva, after the method of production that requires a minimum of three years of barrel aging. Most of these fine, smooth old Solera Gran Reserva brandies, however, spend 10 to 15 years in a solera that originally may have been established up to a hundred years ago. They are sweeter, smoother, softer, and not as fiery as cognac or armagnac.


Several top brands of Solera Gran Reserva Brandies de Jerez are available in the United States. Most of these fine brandies are put up in attractive stoppered glass decanters or unusually shaped bottles packed in red felt boxes, satin-lined boxes, and even cork boxes that make distinctive, prestigious gifts for the holidays. Besides the luxury brandies, Gran Duque de Alba, Lepanto, and Domecq's Carlos I, that we drank at El Suizo, there are there are several other stellar brands to consider: Cardenal Mendoza, an exceptional brandy in a cork box; Domecq's top-of-the-line Carlos I Imperial, in a crystal decanter; Osborne's Conde de Osborne in an odd-shaped bottle originally designed by Salvador Dali; and Garvey's Renacimiento (Renaissance), a very fine, smooth old brandy from the bodega that makes San Patricio fino sherry.

- - The End - -