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Articles · Modern Granada

Modern Granada: Articles from the Napoleonic Years to Today (Page 2)

French mines under the Alhambra, the 1884 quake, and the garrison revolt of July 1936.

A 19th-century diplomat's writing desk by a frosted window in Riga, a pen resting on unfinished pages beside a small dish of Granada pomegranates, evoking Ángel Ganivet's exile between Spain and the Baltic

Ángel Ganivet: Granada's Writer and Diplomat

James Walker

Ángel Ganivet, Granada's own writer-diplomat, wrote Idearium Español from Helsinki, drowned in Riga in 1898, and returned to San José cemetery in 1925.

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Split view inspired by Alhambra 19th century restoration, with coloured yesería and alicatado details beside a restrained conservation drawing in warm archive light

Alhambra 19th Century Restoration: What Contreras Changed

James Walker

Rafael Contreras renewed parts of the Alhambra in the 1800s. See how Leopoldo Torres Balbás later changed the method through conservation and restraint.

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Golden-lit muqarnas dome of the Sala de la Barca inside the Alhambra's Comares Palace, the room gutted by the Alhambra fire of 1890 and rebuilt by 1965

Alhambra Fire of 1890: A Disaster Nearly Forgotten

James Walker

Fire gutted the Alhambra's Sala de la Barca on the night of 15 September 1890. Here's what burned, who was blamed, and how 75 years rebuilt the ceiling.

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Golden-hour view across the Alhambra's Nasrid Palace courtyards and reflecting pools, a Romantic-era painterly atmosphere evoking the 19th-century pilgrimage that shaped today's Alhambra crowds

Alhambra Crowds: How the World Fell for Granada's Palace

James Walker

Alhambra crowds aren't accidental. A ruined fortress became a Romantic pilgrimage, then the world's most tightly visitor-managed site, capped since 2003.

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Enrique Morente performing flamenco cante jondo, an intense weathered singer mid-song under warm amber stage light in an intimate Granada tablao, Albaicín's whitewashed walls visible through a doorway behind him

Enrique Morente: Granada's Flamenco Revolutionary

James Walker

Enrique Morente went from Albaicín choirboy to flamenco's most radical voice, reviving cante, setting Lorca to song, and fusing it with rock on Omega (1996).

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Granada guitar makers at work: a luthier's hands fitting a cedar soundboard onto a flamenco guitar body in a sunlit workshop on Cuesta de Gomérez, wood shavings across the bench

Granada Guitar Makers: Inside the Luthier School

James Walker

Granada has built guitars by hand for 200 years, from Antonio de Torres to Antonio Marín Montero's 1977 meeting with Robert Bouchet — still made here today.

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Sierra Nevada ski resort history in one frame: Pradollano's hotel blocks and apartment terraces at dawn, chairlift towers climbing out of the village toward the snowfields of the Veleta ridge, the Mediterranean haze of the Vega below

Sierra Nevada Ski Resort: How Granada Built It

James Walker Updated

How Granada built Europe's southernmost ski resort: Ganivet's Andalusian Finland dream, the 1935 Veleta road, Cetursa's 1964 lifts, and the 1996 FIS Worlds.

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El Niño de las Pinturas mural in the Realejo of Granada: a hyperrealist child's face at large scale with handwritten Spanish text on a sunlit white wall, the Alhambra hill rising behind

El Niño de las Pinturas: The Artist of the Realejo

James Walker

Raúl Ruiz is El Niño de las Pinturas, the Granada street artist who made the Realejo an open-air gallery and painted his celebrated Lorca mural in New York.

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Ruined Napoleonic-era tower of the Alhambra in Granada at dawn, cracked reddish stone walls with a gaping breach from 1812 gunpowder mines, Sierra Nevada mountains pale in the background, Peninsular War destruction scene

Napoleon in Granada: The Plot to Blow Up the Alhambra

James Walker Updated

In 1812, retreating French troops mined the Alhambra's towers to stop it becoming a fortress again. Eight fell before a disabled soldier disarmed the rest.

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Marble statue of Mariana Pineda, Granada's liberal heroine, in Plaza de Mariana Pineda at golden hour, her right hand resting on a column engraved with 'Homeland, Law, Liberty', wrought-iron benches and orange trees around the pedestal, Albaicín rooftops soft in the background

Mariana Pineda: Granada's Liberal Heroine Executed for Freedom

James Walker Updated

Mariana Pineda, Granada's liberal heroine, was executed by garrote vil in 1831 for a flag found in her house. Her story shaped Lorca's play and Granada's Plaza.

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View of the olive groves and hills near Fuente Grande, between Víznar and Alfacar, where Federico García Lorca was executed in August 1936, with the Sierra de Huétor in the distance

Lorca's Last Day: The 48 Hours That Killed Spain's Greatest Poet

James Walker Updated

Federico García Lorca was arrested on 16 August 1936 and shot by a firing squad near Víznar before midnight on 18 August — his last 48 hours, hour by hour.

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Carmen de la Antequeruela, Manuel de Falla's Granada home at Paseo de los Mártires 11, white-walled Andalusian carmen with garden, Alhambra hill visible in the background

Manuel de Falla in Granada: Composer, Exile, Legacy

James Walker Updated

Manuel de Falla lived in Granada from 1921 to 1939, composing at the foot of the Alhambra and co-organising the landmark 1922 Cante Jondo contest with Lorca.

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