Tapas and Guided Tours in Granada

Hello,

once again, a bit of history. And this time about something so quintessential of Granada as tapas are. In Granada (or "Graná" with the stroke in the last "a" as the name of the city is pronounced by her inhabitants) the tradition of "going tapas" is almost a religion for some of us. And they are free, ahhahaha.

Anyway, the historians tell us that this tradition started during the domain of the king Alfonso X The Wise: he imposed to the population to have a little amount of food with the wine as a incentive to carry on working after it and sustain them until the main meal. Such portion used to be a slice of sausague covering the top of the container in order to avoid contamination or insect to fall inside (that is the reason for the word "tapa" which in english means stopper/tape/lid)

Much as changed since and the tapas in my city are something quite different and a lot more enjoyable as you can appreciate by the photo ;-)

Granada and the Alhambra won't be the same without the legends told for centuries around such magnificent building. And one of the best known is the one regarding to the Door Of Justice.

in my efforts to enlight you in the beauty of Granada, some of the History of my country is due to be told.

And I will focus inthe perid of time which possible define Granada more than any in the Histry of Spain: the Muslim Domination. Such perid lasted from 711 AC until 1492 AC and, in my opinion of NON historian ;-), the best part of all the history of Granada and Spain.

In 711 Táriq ibn Ziyad crossed the strech and landed in Gibraltar with the idea of supporting a cristian nobleman to fight by his side. But once they landed, they set fire to their ships and never went back. That was the beggining of the muslim domination which reintroduced in Europe long time lost knowledge like Maths, ancient greek literature, astronomy and many more sciencies which banished after the collapse of the Roman Empire. At the beggining of that period of time, Al Andalus (the name given to the part of Spain which was muslim) was part of the Caliphate of Damascus but soon it became independent, starting the splendor of their civization.

And Granada was an important part of it. As proof of it, the most beautiful building in this part of Europe: The Alhambra palace.

In arabic, Alhambra means "Red Castle" or "Castle with red walls" and the first reference in records to it was in the IX century. But it is the king Mohamed ben Al-Hamar (Mohamed I, 1238-1273) (who was the first of the Nazari dinasty) who decided to convert such palace in his residence starting an epoch of splendor which lasted until the Catholics Kings conquest Granada

Hi,
it has been a long while since I moved to UK for ,what I thought by the time, ever. Now, I am back to my city ;-)
Along this passed years, many experiencies have changed me for ever and, I hope, for good.
After just a few weeks "back home", my soul still divided between countries but something hasn't changed with the time: Granada is, by far, one of the best cities in Europe in order to discover the meaning of the sentece, in my opinion, use in excess: this is something that worth live for.
Granada is the perfect combination of superb night life and culture. You can easily spend 24 hours on the streets non stop for one week and there would be parts/monuments/bars/discos that you haven't seen/visited.
I would like to open a "virtual portal" to the city that saw me been born to all of you who would like to learn/share the passion that we all have for the Last Romantic city in Europe.
Join me in this journey of selfdiscovering and I would try to enlight you with tales, routes and anecdotes about Granada and the special idiosyncracy of the city and their people.

Go where your soul tell you
Rafa