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Alhambra Adventures
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Pimientito
Posts: 2481
Joined: Jul. 30 2007
From: Marbella
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 RE: Alhambra Adventures (in reply to Pimientito)
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After a climb up the steep hill and wood land leading to the Alhambra, I walked through the Puerta de Justicia and into the C/ Real. Arriving at the museum, I was disappointed to find it closed so I asked a security guard outside when it would be open again. He shrugged his shoulders and said he didn’t know. This is not the first time in Andalucia I have been on a wild goose chase and I felt that day would be no different but I asked him if maybe he could suggest someone who could help. He said I should go to the information office down the hill. At the information office I asked what time the museum was open. They shrugged their shoulders and said they didn’t know either because it was a private museum and didn’t really fall into the category of information about the Alhambra. At this point I was starting to get a bit frustrated which only led to make me more determined to see the Barrios Archive.
…ok then how do I find out about who can let me into the archive.
“that’s a security issue…you need to go to the security office.”
So then I walked all the way up to the top of the C/Real again to a small security office where 2 armed guards looked at me suspiciously while I was nervously asking about the archive.
Again I got shrugged shoulders “we don’t know when it will be open” followed by “you don’t have security clearance anyway”
….So how do I get that then?
“Find Mariano…he’s in the admin building somewhere. Go through the door, turn left, then right, follow round, up, down, right again and you will find him”
The day was not going well, I had planned to get to the archive, research the scores and get home for lunch. So far I had been walking up and down the Alhambra for 2 hours and getting nowhere. I had never been in this part of the Alhambra before and now I was completely lost in the admin building. I knocked on a random door and asked for Mariano.
A middle aged man looked up from a desk piled with paperwork. “yes” he replied.
You are Mariano? Thank God. I explained that I wanted to get into the Barrios archive.
“well that is shut right now because we are changing it around. Most of the material isn’t there any more”
So is there any way to view the documents
“well, are you an official researcher?
At this point in the conversation I didn’t want to ask what an official researcher was so I simply said yes!
“Well I could give you a security pass to the Alhambra archive I suppose”
The archive of the whole Alhambra?????
“yes, give me your ID, and I’ll get you clearance”
I sat back in the guards office again. 10 minutes later Mariano returned with a red card laminated in plastic, signed and stamped, numbered and dated, a security pass into the Archive. It was a ticket into Aladdin’s cave!
I consider myself to know the Alhambra very well. I have been there dozens of times and walk my dog around it on Sundays. I have explored everywhere open to the public and seen a lot of parts that are not. It still surprises me to find new things, new buildings, gardens and places I havent seen before. If we consider not just the old city walls but all the woodland around the palace, then the area from the back of the Alhambra cemetery to the Torre Bermeja and Rio Darro is at least 6 km long and at least 30square km. I have yet to see everything in it.
The next week I went back to the Alhambra with my pass and walked towards the archive. The Alhambra archive is situated above the Generalife. It’s a huge building, maybe 3 city blocks and 4 stories high. Some areas of it are storage for the arsenal of gardening equipment, others are for conservation and then there is the archive and library. Its very secure, more so than the Alhambra itself and has cameras every 50 yards on the fences around it. It took me a while to find the door to the archive and even longer to find someone to let me in. However once I was inside, the curators were unbelievably helpful, friendly and efficient. Everything is cataloged on computer. You find the item and the curators get it for you. The computer system is linked to all the other archives in Granada so if an item you are researching isn’t kept there, the system will tell you where it is.
Not only that, they can make copies of anything from documents, photos, manuscripts.
Much of the archive is digitized and you can explore parts of it from home by logging into the system of archives at www.juntadeandalucia.es .This will tell you if the item is stored at the archive...but you cant see the digitised item or download it unless you are logged into the alhambra system. Once you are inside the alhambra system you can access, examine and download everything.
I plundered the photo collection for images of guitarists and composers in Granada and came away with some very useful and unobtainable images. However, I couldn’t get copies of Barrios guitar scores. “They are not here” I was told, “you have to go the centre of musical documentation on the River Darro. They hold all the manuscripts.”
So the following week I went to the manuscript archive who again were very helpful. The archive is hard to find because all you can see in the street is a small plaque on the wall. I must have walked past it hundreds of times over the years and never noticed it. An anonymous wooden door leads to a staircase that takes you up to the library. I asked the curators to help me locate the material and some minutes later they returned with boxes of documents. They had scores of everything by Barrios, Segovia, Ruiz Pipo and a lot of works by luis de Narveaz too (although not the one I was looking for). This was unbelievably helpful. I raided this archive too and digitized most of the Barrios and Ruiz Pipo material.
They didn’t however have the scores by Manuel de Falla. “they are all kept in the Manuel de Falla archive”…….so rather intrepidly I went to investigate.
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Date Feb. 18 2012 9:38:39
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I hope we'll also be able to hear the material performed at some point, it must been on the verge of having been forgotten considering the amount of trouble you had to go through to get these transcriptions.
