A bus was leaving in 10 minutes for Granada, and an hour and a half away was the Alhambra, the jewel of Moorish Spain. I arrived just in time to get the last visiting slot of the day, and saw the palace in all its glory: crescent moon rising on cue, and bats whirling round the delicate columns and arches of this fairy palace.The tourist stuff over and done with, I wondered what else to do. The locals still promenade at sundown, alongside the long-standing gypsy community. But there is a new presence in Granada a glut of New Age travellers who now hang out on the bridges and plazas by the Darro river.These young people in ethnic garb, dreadlocked, pierced, unwashed and with a dazed air, are a conspicuous, if unacknowledged, presence in the town. I knew something was afoot when, arriving at the bus station, I found its shelter plastered over with notices advertising crystals, rebirthing and a panoply of New Age activities, the like of which I hadn't seen since I was in Haight Ashbury in San Francisco, or Glastonbury for that matter.I found Sam scavenging in a skip by the Plaza Santa Ana. Originally British, whatever that meant, he had a simple explanation for Granada's appeal "Hash It's close to Morocco.
And if you're gonna live free, you might as well live in the sun." He had been living by busking in southern Spain for nine years, and had quite forgotten what date it was. His friend Noel explained that many travellers had left Britain after the recent restrictions to their freedom of movement and assembly imposed by the Criminal Justice Act. He had followed a performing clown down from Barcelona, decided to stay here for the winter. Now he was looking in the skip for a door to his cave.His cave? That's right Granada is famous for them. In fact, 30,000 people live in caves in the Granada region, the largest troglodyte community in Europe.
The foot of the Alhambra, the hills of the Sacromonte district and the whole surrounding area are honeycombed with ancient caves. Warm in the winter, cool in the summer, they are desirable enough residences for the New Age travellers, particularly those who had cut their teeth on tepees in Wales. Sam even had a tip for those spending the night there: "Scorpions. Check your boots every morning, man."With my head full of Famous Five-inspired images of smugglers' dens and secret passages, I followed Noel's directions up the tortuous, narrow paths to Sacromonte to explore the caves, only to find that the majority had been modernised beyond recognition it took me a while to realise that I had actually found them. After all, the ones in Enid Blyton's books didn't have Pepsi signs over the entrance.
