unguided tour

Granada, Spain. A group of tourists trying to locate the remnants of a mosque. “It must be right here … somewhere… This looks exactly like on the photograph, doesn’t it? ”

Granada is protected by images.

There are the images the foreigner brings to the city. No-one comes to Granada who hasn’t seen pictures of the magnificent Alhambra, or the imposing Cathedral, or the nostalgic charm of the Albayzin, or of toreros and flamenco dancers. Then there are the images the visitor takes with him when he leaves the city: photographs taken with a cell phone or the digital camera dangling from his wrist; picture postcards bought in the souvenir shops between Plaza Nueva and Puerta Real, and along Gran Via de Colón. Often he tries to replicate the view of a postcard he has just bought.

The postcards fall into two categories. Glossy, colorful bird’s-eye views of the city and its major sights, and nostalgic sepia toned scenes of “historic Granada” — an old fashioned tram at Puerta Real, a group of children on a dusty road in front of a church, a peasant with his donkey. While the postcards specifically tell me what they show — the Alhambra, a historic view of Gran Via — they are not as forthcoming regarding information about when the picture was taken. As if, strange to say, in this ancient city the past had no time.

“Every photograph,” writes John Berger,” presents us with two messages. A message concerning the event photographed and another concerning a shock of discontinuity.” For some viewers this shock can be traumatic — the photograph ‘kills,’ arrests time — for others the shock can bring relief. Granada, I think, takes comfort in the stillness of the past, sees it as a safeguard against the return of traumatic memories that are part of the city’s history.

Is this the reason Granada prefers to rely on the ambiguity of images and appearances, on the fact that photographs (and architecture) can’t speak for themselves? If they could speak, what would they tell of?

They would tell of the killing of the Jews and the forced conversion of the Muslims after the city’s conquest in 1492 by the catholic monarchs Isabel and Fernando; the would tell of the murder of those who continued practicing their religion, of the destruction of synagogues and mosques, the burning of more than 30,000 books in Arabic, the banishing of the Arabic language, the prohibition to wear Muslim-style clothes, and the closing of the city’s bath houses; they would remark on the ostentatious, almost religious consumption of jamón (pork); and they would tell of the mass graves just outside the city where the corpses of those executed by Francisco Franco’s fascist followers during and after the Spanish civil war have been left to rot for more than seven decades.

In Granada postcards are shields. Every single one a defense against the intrusion of the city’s disavowed past. As long as the city sells postcards Granada is safe. Or is it?

Imagination begins with an image. Images are closer to the unconscious than words.

Tomorrow I’m going to buy postcards.

———————————————

Tags: granada

Posted: September 11th, 2009