For almost two centuries, western travelers have been drawn to visit Granada. It is to the Alhambra Palace and its gardens that we flock, and upon reflection this might seem curious. For the Alhambra was the last stronghold in Spain of an Islamic culture we judge to be quite alien to our experience. But is it really? The palace and gardens we visited this morning have a distinctively modern feel to them. They are clean and bright, spacious and light, abstract and geometrical in design. For the early twenty-first century traveler, this is a place of "good vibes."
By contrast, our afternoon visit to the Royal Chapel and cathedral in the city itself made us feel less at ease. The mausoleum of the Reyes Catolicos, Ferdinand and Isabela, makes a stridently political statement in the context of some very bloody imagery crowded into gaudy altarpieces in darkly-lit chapels. This is our inheritance too, but the troubled and traumatic one of ethnic cleansing over many centuries. The year 1492 was the year the Moors and the Jews were expelled from Spain and Columbus landed in the Americas. Eurocentrism begins here.
