6/21/07 Costa del Sol

Finally, the beautiful beach of Costa Del Sol, this place is like a resort town with its many hotels and bars and restaurants on both sides of the street. We arrived here after a 2 hour drive from Granada. In Granada, we had the chance to tour the Alhambra which is an old peaceful garden with many palaces that surround it. This place was a great place to see and the artwork inside and out of the palaces was magnificent to look at. The writings on the walls were all Arabic and you could tell that the words told a story or had a special meaning. In class we are backtracking to chapters 4&5 and we just started discussing the Moros and the Christianos fight over Spain.



In the beginning the Moors controlled two-thirds of the peninsula and the most powerful of these places were Sevilla, Granada, Cordoba and Almeria. A ruler from Sevilla by the name Motadid, used human skulls for flowerpots around his palace. As for his amusement he kept the heads of rivals in leather cases. The Moorish-Christian had a depiction of an early wild West because it attracted all kinds of adventurous people. This would then cause the Reconquest (La Reconquista) which is the most distinctive factor of medieval Spanish history.



Fernando I of Castilla had been the leading figure in the reconquest with his capturing of Valencia then Portugal. Later after his death a new man who became one of the most exalted figures in Spanish history known as El Cid Campeador. El Cid made his fame by a great epic poem in Spanish history. Later he became known as a national hero, because it had been said that he could subdue lions at a glance. He eventually became exhiled by Alfonso VI who had been a military figure that pentrated Andalucia then later capturing Toledo in his first crucial capture of the Reconquest.