Spanish honour

In the background playing is an Arabian zither and the unseen hands peel back the towel hiding the last of the winter-white flesh.

As your face is on the massage table, with orange-blossom scents floating from a dozen candles making a Middle-Eastern luxury ambience, that you find in the Arabic baths of Granada.

The main purpose of the massage is for some people to send them to sleep, and sleep is anathema to the people of Granada . When you are fully clothed and the clocks are approaching midnight , you walk into you first and last bar of the evening.

You work your way around the overturned wine-barrel tables and into a small gap in the 60ft counter. Here there is no menu and the only form of a feeding system seemed to be focussed on the main theme, one man, and one fork. Underneath the chaos, there was a well-oiled machine that sees to it that there is a continuous supply of food and drinks

The evening was enjoyed by having tapas. Coming round to number two out of four which went - anchovies, chorizo, Russian salad, clams, anchovies, chorizo, Russian salad, clams, all in sequence, of the free food.

Life is made easier over in the city, as it works by two evening shifts. For there are some people that go home with the last of the tourist and give the city back to the first of the Grandiños. As they get ready for yet another bust night of talking and drinking.

Shaking off the dust from the night before, you wake up to a deep blue of an Andalusian morning. The narrow road by the River Darro is still silent. However, at the top of the Gran Via, it’s very busy with the rush hour. This is when you see the people that you went out with the night before, going off to work and only stopping to a couple of hours to themselves before they have their mid-morning break.

If you go back from the tide, go up the Cuesta de Gomérez towards the Alhambra . It is the Moors that had ruled Granada for five centuries when they did all the finishing touches to the Alhambra in 1240. From then on is has put a spell over the city, no tourist can resist the call. In 1829, the author, Washington Irving lived here and got together many of its legends.

It was seven hundred years of one of Europe ’s greatest civilisations that was brought to an end when Boabdil sited his horse towards the mountain passes.

Then Alhambra was taken over by the Christian rulers, Ferdinand and Isabella, who became the acknowledged ruler of all Spain . It was their grandson, Charles V, who built them a palace within the walls and it has a firm façade that seemed out of place in amongst the subtle arabesques.

As, now there are no Moors left, the Granadiños went to the gypsies for a flavour of the exotic. You can see a bit of this exoticism in the Albaicín, the old Moorish quarter. At the middle there is the Plaza Larga, which is full of teenagers and gypsies that sell figs as large as apples and juicy cherries from Alpujarras.

Here, when it is sunset, it is known as the witching hour. As the spirits, both real and imaginary wander the Albaicín. If you go to the viewpoint at San Nicolás, where you can see an excellent free show in Granada is to start.

If you don’t get there early then you will find that all the best seats are taken. You will see that there are some worshippers that are walking out of the mosque close by to the ranks.

On the opposite hill, is the Alhambra , which looked wonderful against the huge backdrop of the snow-topped Sierra Nevada . When the sun goes down, the brick blood colours of the palace shine across the valley.

When the darkness sets in, you can see a nice view of the Alhambra , which is alight like a fairy tale castle; the Albaicín dropped steeply to the Darro gorge, while lights flickered in the distant caves of the Sacromonte from he upstairs rooms of the Mirador de Morayma restaurant.

Just past the Royal Chapel are the tombs of Ferdinand and Isabella. It was in 1492, as they took the Alhambra , they also ordered the expulsion of the Jews and Moors; this had launched Columbus on his journey to the Americas , and also helped to pave the way for everything that has gone on in Spain since then.