Four Days in Spain

   What I learned in four days.

  Sevilla is both a port and an inland city. It has a bull ring with the grace and delicacy of a roller coaster. Yes, orange trees everywhere.
  Granada to the north was originally called Elibiryg or Illiberis by the Romans.  Not Gra-nat. Even though the pomegranate "una granada"  became the city's symbol.

  It grew up along a river- a mountain stream, called the Beiro. "Elibiryg"- By the Beiro. River of the….Iberians. Or as the Catholic Spanish call her now with their eliding Bs and Vs - Elvira.

  So next time the dull and painful thud of that fateful country chorus reconquers your memory : fight. Fight, fight, to envision a stunning hill town - like a Venice laid among quiet foothills racing toward the peaks of the Sierra Neveda with a fierce little brook running below a palace and right by a street so gorgeous it's listed by UNESCO. And on that street is an Irish bar that didn't stay open late enough for me watch the Steelers win the conference. A bar in Spain shutting down before I did…I've seen it all.

   "And do people living in Toledo know that their name doesn't travel very well ? And does anybody in Ohiiiiiiiioooooo dream of that Spanish citadel. L L. "

   Google it. 

   At the other end of this famous riverine street is a cemetery and a hill- called Sacramonte where legend has it the Sephardim and Mariscos - the Muslims who met the same exiled fate- went and hid from the Inquisition. And it was here they say that the cantors and the muezzin met the wandering folk of the day - Romani- living at the edge of the wilderness and created a thing called …Flamenco….to put their sorrow somewhere into words and music. And of course, stamping feet.
   You're told often that the Jews "were given" 4 months to decide whether to leave Spain (with nothing) or convert. That order was given from the throne of a Moorish castle sitting 300 feet above me- as I typed this four days ago- called the Alhambra. On that day in 1492, with a little dramatic pressure from the inimitable Torquemada, Ferdinand and moreso -I get the impression- Isabella, decided to turn on Spain's "creative class".
  The Dictat of Expulsion. Even though "their Jews" had paid recently for a trip by a man named Columbus. Even though Isabella let no man - even Ferdinand more and more so I'm beginning to believe- let no man touch her but her physician. Who was Jewish.
   200,000 Jews. Probably more. Out of a population of 6 million.
   How many left? How many stayed? It's all recorded and stored in neatly written files on the third floor of a stately building in Sevilla that handled the Office of The Spanish Inquisition - katty corner from a Starbucks- an offshoot of the Vatican's Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Inquisition which changed its name in 1908 but which, "in name" at least, continues to this day.
  The Spanish expulsion held sway until the mid 19th century.
   Ive heard stories about catholic Portugese families in Providence Rhode Island who up to the late 50s lit candles on Friday nights …well, because they always had. Certain Spanish mother's have pans for meat and pans for dairy.
  In 1992 King Juan Carlos formally invited Jews with any record of their Sephardic roots to return.
  There are 30 families in Grenada.
  There are 15,000 total, mostly in cities like Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and Sevilla.
  There are more Jews in Poland. And Uruguay.
  And there are families in Istanbul, in Israel, in Greece, in the United States that have keys they've kept in vaults, wrapped in drawers, or hung from their bedroom walls made in the 15th century or sometimes earlier. House keys their ancestors walked out of Spain with, thinking, this madness will all be over soon and we'll come back.
   A family from Turkey returned not long ago and discovered that their ancestors had lived in a house in the Arab section of medieval Granada, rather than the Jewish quarter which was leveled and of which nothing remains. Possibly they were counsel or physicians to a prominent family that wanted them close by. A few palaces and homes from the time of the Moors still stand in the Arab section, the Albaicin. One of them has several ancient doors which this now Turkish key still opens.
   Thus far Spain hasn't invited back the Muslims.
   Who ruled it for 7 centuries.
   And I wonder, when you kick out a group that's run "your" land for 7 centuries are you really kicking out someone else or just other Spaniards that have land and power you want and happen to practice Islam? I mean maybe at one point they were them but after 3/4s of a millennia aren't you they and them you? By then hasn't - to paraphrase True Romance- hasn't blonde hair and blue eyes become black hair and dark skin? Can someone say Sarajevo?
  But Hell, look at the Irish.