Andalucia | // charles armstrong //

[ 19:33 Saturday 11 November – Rodalquilar, Cabo de Gata Nature Reserve, Andalucia ]

Two months ago today, Alex and I travelled to the town of Vera to participate in a peculiar and highly stylised ritual. Entering a marble-clad office, we were guided to seats at one side of a long table. Around the table with us were three lawyers, a realtor and a bank manager. Once everyone was in their place, the lawyers started passing bundles of paper back and forth between them. Once all the papers had all reached their destination, one of the lawyers picked up a document and began to recite its contents in formal and slightly antiquated Spanish.

The recitation continued for perhaps ten minutes, with several pauses for dramatic effect. At its conclusion one of the other lawyers passed a paper and gestured at me to sign, which I did. This paper was then handed to a different lawyers and a second paper was handed to me for signature. After scribbling my name on six or seven documents, each of which was taken from me and added to a bundle, the bank manager leaned forward and passed a cheque to the realtor. At this point one of the lawyers turned to me and whispered “Ahora la casa es tuya”, which means “Now the house is yours”. Papers continued being passed around and signed, but my heart was pounding and my head was spinning and I was no longer concentrating on what was happening around me.

In five decades on this planet I’ve never cared about owning a house. From early in my life, I thought Western civilisation’s notion of private property was a dreadful mistake. Wherever I’ve found myself in the world, I’ve rented houses that I loved living in. My restless temperament appreciated the freedom to move on whenever I wanted, without any long-term responsibilities or the weight of a mortgage on my shoulders. Ironically I did try to buy each of the three houses I occupied in London between 2003 and 2021, but in each case it was an attempt to avoid getting kicked out of them, and in each case it failed.

When Alex and I packed up Old Ford Lock in June 2021 and started living nomadically in Spain, it had a bizarre side effect. Wherever we found ourselves I would obsessively start scouring property listings in the area and arrange visits to any houses that caught my eye. Over the next two years I must have gone through tens of thousands of listings in Mallorca, Menorca, Andalucia and Catalunya; and probably dragged Alex to look around twenty or thirty houses in total.

Many of the areas where we spent time were exquisite. But the place we finally fell in love with was the Cabo de Gata nature reserve in Andalucia. Its arid volcanic landscape, wild coastline and extraordinary sense of emptiness feel more like Syria or Mexico than mainland Europe. Alex first visited the area in their childhood. Within a month of meeting Alex they’d already concluded it was a place I’d like. My first experience of the reserve was a ten day stay in Los Escullos last July. That short visit made such a great impression that we rented a house in Las Hortichuelos to spend the whole of October, which is when we started looking at houses.

It’s been a long process, with some horrible twists and turns, but on 11th September we became owners of a two-storey house with 182 square metres of interior space and 3,000 square metres of land. Rodalquilar, the tiny village where it’s located, was first established by Berber settlers in the eighth century. In the mediaeval period it became an important source of alum, a vital ingredient for the European textile industry. In the nineteenth century gold was discovered and the village expanded to accommodate workers for the mines that sprang up. The last mine closed in 1966 and the village was abandoned. Then in the 1980s a group of german artists bought derelict houses in the village, attracted by the clear light and arid landscape. Gradually the community started to grow again. Today Rodalquilar has an official population of 250.

The village of Rodalquilar at the edge of a huge caldera

Rodalquilar is located on the northern edge of a vast volcanic caldera, 8km in diameter, formed by a collapsing magma chamber 11 million years ago. The central area of the caldera is a level plain ringed by mountains. The eastern section ends in a wide curving bay with a white sand beach, completely undeveloped other than the 18th century fortress of San Ramon, built to guard the alum exports from pirates. The water is spectacularly clear and filled with fish. From our house we can reach the bay by bike in nine minutes. In the middle of October the sea was still twenty-three degrees. Now in mid-November the water has fallen to seventeen degrees. It feels a bit chilly getting in but if the sun is shining it is still delicious once you’re in. Alex and I both had a swim this afternoon.

The house was constructed in 2011, intended as the prototype for a development which never materialised. The architecture is quite experimental, with internal spaces laid out in a zig-zag over four levels, linked by a double-height stairwell. Exterior terraces wrap around the South and West faces of the house, also spread over four levels.

The morning after buying the house, a lorry arrived containing all our belongings from the storage unit in Romford. It took three hours to unload everything. Most of it went straight into the cavernous basement. It was exciting to be reunited with everything after two and a half years. However if I’m honest, most of what we own will be completely unnecessary here.

Since arriving, Alex and I have steadily been buying furniture and equipment for the house. Each week we’ve dedicated a couple of evenings to building a long-list of options for whatever item we’re focused on, before swapping notes and trying to agree a final option. Probably our proudest acquisition so far is a 1970s corner sofa in orange, yellow and black stripes that Alex had shipped from Italy. It’s taken two months, but most of the large items are finally in place. I’ll be delighted if I don’t have to look at another furniture or houseware website for the next month or two.

This may seem strange, but the aspects of a permanent house I’m enjoying the most after two-and-a-half years of nomadic living are having a piano and a high-quality audio system. Every day I spend an hour on the piano, currently circulating between Shostakovich, Bach, Debussy and Chopin. With its black-tiled floors and double-height space the house has a much more echoey acoustic than anywhere I’ve lived before, which is marvellous for the piano. In the evenings Alex and I fill the house with music from our punchy amplifier and speakers, marvelling at the details we can hear again after two years listening through a tinny portable speaker.

Our plan for the coming year is to split our time 50/50 between the house in Rodalquilar and the boat in London. Each evening before I go to bed, I walk out onto one of the terraces and spend a few minutes with my gaze turned upwards. In the absence of any light pollution, the night sky is an explosion of stars. I could not be more grateful that my life has led me to this place, and at Alex’s side. I feel as though I’ve found something I’ve been searching for all my life, without realising it.

: c :

[ 12:51 Tuesday 13 December 2022 – Gran Via de Colon, Granada, Andalucia ]

From where I sit on the roof terrace, the medieval heart of Granada unwinds beneath me like a labyrinth, the skyline punctuated by churches. To my left, the hulking mass of the cathedral, commenced 1518 on the site of the previous grand mosque, stands as a permanent marker of the Catholic monarchy’s final defeat of Spain’s Islamic civilisation after seven centuries.

In front of me, the sober dome and tower of Santos Justo y Pastor rise above the rooftops, built in 1575 as the convent church of the Hermandad de la Encarnación. To my right, the white-and-green tiled dome of San Juan de Dios strikes a jollier note, constructed from 1737 with a jaw-dropping baroque interior where every available surface is coated in gold.

Beyond the medieval centre and the suburbs stretches the wide fertile plain, Granada’s “Vega”. In the distance the horizon is ringed by low mountains. Finally, leaning over the parapet and looking to my left, the peaks of the high Sierra Nevada form a spectacular backdrop to the city, rising to three thousand metres and capped in snow.

Mulhacen, 3,482 metres, the highest peak of the Sierra Nevada

For the last last three days the weather has been unsettled. As I write the Vega is dotted with patches of light and dark as clouds prowl across the sky. The mountains to my right are veiled beneath a grey curtain as a rainstorm passes over, heading towards the city. Sometime in the next half hour I’ll need to duck indoors and wait for the rain to pass.

We arrived in this flat at the start of November. The Andalucian winter is so mild and sunny I’ve been able to spend most days working out here on the terrace with my laptop, often wearing no more than a T shirt. This strikes quite a contrast with last winter in Pollença, where we were trapped inside with a blazing fire while gales and torrential rain battered the windows.

Vaulting in the Capilla Real, Cathedral de Granada

Granada is where Alex was born and went to university. I visited the city with him shortly after we met. However this is the first extended period we’ve spent here together. This is also the first of our Spanish homes located in a city centre rather than the country.

The city is delightful, the centre small enough that one can reach anywhere in thirty minutes by foot. Each week we buy fish from a stall in the central market, fruit and vegetables from our favourite grocer, bread from one of a handful of bakers. Occasionally we stop for tapas at one of the dozens of bars surrounding the house. We’ve been to art galleries, concerts and dance performances. Along the way I’ve met a variety of Alex’s childhood friends. My Spanish is just about at a point where I can converse with someone who speaks no English, albeit haltingly and with grievous errors.

Late night Flamenco in its true habitat, a cave in Sacromonte

The area of Granada I’m most drawn to is the Albayzin. This is the oldest part of the city, where the Romans established their settlement of Iliberis on a hill overlooking the plain in 44BC. More significantly, it’s where Zawa ben Ziri established Gharnata in 1009AD, the capital of the Zirid kingdom.

Over the subsequent 481 years Gharnata grew to be one of the greatest cities of the Islamic world, famed for its climate, fertility and artisanship. After the Catholic conquest of 1492 the geographical focus shifted to the foot of the hill where the medieval and modern city developed. As a result the Albayzin remains miraculously preserved, much as the Zirids would have recognised it.

A labyrinth of narrow streets and alleyways cling to the steep hillside, some no more than a metre wide, lined with houses of two or three storeys, often wrapped around a tranquil internal courtyard. Every so often a street opens onto an intimate plaza with a church at one end, which invariably turns out to have been a mosque previously. Underpinning the settlement is the virtuosic system of aqueducts and cisterns constructed by the Zirids to supply the city with water from springs ten kilometres to the north, much of it still in operation today.

Before arriving in Granada we spent a couple of weeks in Ferreirola, a tiny and silent village with 90 inhabitants, 1,000 metres high on the southern flank of the Sierra Nevada. This is one of fifty villages in the Alpujarra, a region settled by Berbers following the Islamic occupation of 711AD. They brought with them a distinctive and finely-tuned array of architectural, irrigation and agricultural practices from the Atlas mountains. The villages consist of white houses with stone walls, flat roofs made from branches supporting a layer of stones, with first floors extending over the narrow streets to provide shelter from the harsh winter weather.

The Alpujarra is as close to a Garden of Eden as anywhere on earth I’ve been. Springs bubble from the earth at every step, some producing sparkling water, others rich in iron. Forests of chestnut, walnut and oak cloak the mountainside. Orchards and gardens overflow with fruits and vegetables of every kind. Alex and I spent our days hiking and losing ourselves in the abundant nature.

In July I wrote about our first visit to Los Escullos in the Cabo de Gata Biosphere Reserve, on Andalucia’s southern coast. We both loved the area, so we decided to return and spend more time. For the month of October we rented a house in Las Hortichuelas Bajas, a tiny village at the foot of an ancient volcano, at the centre of the reserve.

La Isletta del Moro, in the Cabo de Gata Biosphere Reserve

In July the area felt remarkably free of tourists, but in October it was positively deserted. Over the course of the month we explored almost the entire coast from Cabo de Gata to Carboneras, with its seemingly infinite selection of wild coves and beaches, each with its own dramatic cliffs or rock outcrops.

During the month we experienced just one storm, complete with thunder, lightning and an hour of torrential rain. In such an arid landscape the rain felt like a miracle. The next day the air was filled with the rich perfumes of plants. Each afternoon we went to swim either on the stony beach at Las Negras or the broad sandy arc of Playazo de Rodalquilar, which became our favourite. Alex’s parents and my parents both came to stay while we were there.

Now, three months after our arrival in Andalucia, this chapter of our journey is almost at an end. The house is packed up and in a few hours Alex will drive me to the airport. After a week of meetings in London I’ll join my family for Christmas in Cornwall.

Andalucia is not at all what I expected. I imagined the blend of Islamic and Christian elements would be similar to Sicily, which I know well, however Andalucia is wildly different. The fusion of North African and European elements is woven much more deeply through every aspect of the landscape and culture, with the contributions of the Islamic civilisation more vividly present in the modern culture.

In truth we’ve barely scratched the surface of Andalucia in these months, yet already the contrasts are striking. The aridity of Cabo de Gata versus the lush fertility of the Alpujarra, the cosmopolitan vitality of Granada versus the silent stillness of Las Hortichuelas, the winter sunshine and blossoms of the Vega versus the snow-covered terrain of the Sierra Nevada.

This has been an intoxicating first immersion in Andalucia. I doubt it will be the last.

: c :

// charles armstrong //

Category Archives: Andalucia

r o d a l q u i l a r

a l a n d a l u s