Hola Granada

 Have you ever considered taking that old picnic table to a neighborhood yard sale and then thought “Hey, I could take this apart it and use the wood to make a raised bed for my tomato plants.” If so, your life is much like the history of southern Spain, as illustrated by this Catholic church in Madrid with Muslim archways inside.

Give or take a few wars, mass executions and various abuses by a church I will not name so as not to make anyone uncomfortable, the defining quality of southern Spain is how each successive civilization adapted what was already there to another use.

“These Phoenician ports are definitely fixer uppers, but with a little TLC, I think we can make it work,” said the Romans. 

“These Roman aqueducts are made of almost perfect rectangular stone blocks,” said the Muslims. “Let’s dismantle the aqueducts and use the stones to build mosques.” 

“You had me at ‘mosques,’” said the Catholics. “With a little sprucing up they would make terrific churches.” 

“Churches!” remarked a developer. “They would be perfect to convert to upscale hotels.”

This sort of thing is everywhere, like in Toledo where Martha is pictured here standing in front of the Arch of Blood (don’t ask), which is right around the corner from one of 273 Catholic churches. 

And after a four-hour train ride this morning, we have gone from a world of paella to one of shawarma, from street vendors with “I heart Madrid” t-shirts to ones with Islamic-arch themed refrigerator magnets, from dormant oaks to fruiting orange trees and the smell of incense in the air. 

We are in Granada in far southern Spain (forty miles or so from Northern Africa), which is the poster child for Iberian infrastructural reappropriation, a term I just made up.