11. (The) Alhambra.

31.01.24 : Granada

Until very recently, I thought that Alhambra was a beer. Which it is, in fact, and a damn good one at that. For design purists, it scratches the aesthetic itch. The beer itself is housed in a slim green vessel. Glass, of course. And quality glass at that. Weighty and purposeful; the kind you used to throw in a bottle bank with a resonant clink, before local council infrastructure cau

ght up with our on-demand, click-and-collect lives. The kind that could even be lined up on a wall – all too precariously, in my opinion – to help children learn to count. 

Alhambra has no label. The entirety of the brand rests on the striking silhouette and unmistakable deep jade of the bottle itself. The logo stands out in relief, embossed twice, on the neck and body of the bottle. Spin it and on the back you find proudly stamped: Alhambra Reserva Cerveza Extra 30cl. Not even a standard measure. And the liquid? Gold. Well, amber to be precise. A reinterpretation of the Bohemian-style pilsner, hopped with Czech Saaz, whose malt is harvested from the fields of Navarra, Albacete and Sevilla. 

As far as I was concerned, if there did happen to be a palace in Granada named Alhambra – which, by the way, there is, for anyone still in the dark – it may as well have been named after the beer. Some sort of elaborate tribute, you know? 

Now this may be slightly revealing of just how uncultured I can be. Luckily I have Doug with me. When I mentioned we’d be spending a rest day in Granada on our way to Seville, he appeared equally animated to discover that we’d be going to the hometown of Alhambra. He was so excited in fact, that he kept calling it The Alhambra. At first, I appreciated the weight he was giving it — genre-defining beer that it is — but after a few conversations I began to suspect we weren’t quite on the same page. As it happens, he was referring to one of Spain’s most popular tourist attractions: the fortified palace complex that sits proudly above the city of Granada. Perhaps the most famous example of Moorish architecture (architecture of the Islamic West) still around today – or so Google tells me. 

Claudio, our Valencian Warmshowers host, was also quick to endorse Doug’s enthusiasm around The Alhambra – I refrained from revealing what I thought he’d meant – and suggested we book tickets far ahead given the popularity. The matter of the booking commanded a full evening’s tent-admin (technical term). At €19, entry wasn’t quite at (what we’d become accustomed to as) Andalusian pricing. For this, we were staring down an opportunity cost of sizable proportions – or do I just mean portions? Andalusian Tapas is on the heartier side.

I used to take a hard line against paying for entry to museums, landmarks and national parks. Uncultured, right? Not quite. You see, it’s not that I didn’t value them, per se, it’s more that an entry fee often came hand-in-hand with a veritable tome of Rules and Regulations. I liked neither. It’s not surprising, then, that during a European van trip with my friend Tom, we went to great lengths to skirt an entry fee to Czechia’s Adršpach National Park. This included slinking through the forest, vaulting chain link fences and even disguising ourselves as park rangers (or The Green Men as we’d named them) using a uniform jacket we’d stumbled upon amongst the trees. We were eventually caught, of course, and forced to pay the 170 CZK entry fee (about £5). Not a bad price for a fetching bomber jacket, we thought. Ah, youthful impudence. But I’ve grown up. So now I cough up the fee and only minorly overlook the accompanying red-tape. In the case of The Alhambra: backpacks must be worn on the front. An ergonomic, not to mention stylistic, faux pas, in my opinion. 

But I must say, The Alhambra was worth every penny; even with its unfashionable bureaucracy. Not that this is news. Anyone with a modicum of cultural interest will find it a goldmine of history, horticulture, architecture and, as we discovered, geometry. As it happens, The Alhambra is one of the few places to exhibit all 17 mathematically possible groups of symmetries (think: ways that patterns can repeat) in mosaic decoration. Now, I don’t exaggerate when I say we spent the entirety of our allotted two hour window in the Nasrid Palaces scouring academic papers on the 17 Plane Symmetry Groups, determined to work our way through the mathematical minefield of rotation centres, rhombic lattices and non-trivial glide reflections. And by God was it time well spent. It scratched the brain in a delicious way. 

For a long time maths was my paramour. While at school I got immense pleasure from wrestling with the infamous Solomon Papers: a collection of particularly vicious sample A-level maths questions, put out – I can only assume – in a concerted and malevolent effort by the exam boards to seriously undermine the confidence of anyone looking to take the subject. This wrestle continued at university, where discussions of hyperplanes had us imagining shapes in the Nth dimension. It was common to leave lectures in need of a stiff drink, just to bring the world back into (albeit fuzzy) 3D. These were unfair fights, and ones that I lost more often than not. But the joy was always in the trying, and the warm glow of contentment resulting from minor victories. 

So it was with the 17 Groups. By the end of our mind-bending trip into the world of fractals (academically, you must understand), we could independently identify a good number of the 17 groups and categorise the tile patterns we saw accordingly. Sadly, non-trivial glide reflections remained just beyond our reach. I’ve included a particularly satisfying example below, where adjacent walls sport stylistically similar patterns, each belonging to an entirely different crystallographic groups. (I apologise for the jargon, but when else will I be able to fit crystallographic into one of my blogs?) I’ve included the rationale below for those with thumb-twiddling time on their hands. For anyone with a life, blind faith will do! 

You get the picture. Minefield. Anyway, thanks to our obsession with the geometry of The Alhambra’s internal arabesque, we left no more enlightened about the history of the place than we’d arrived. If you’re interested, I’d suggest Wikipedia.

So, to conclude. 

1. Alhambra is perhaps the most seductively dressed beer around.

2. The Alhambra was a place – well, a palace actually – before it was a beverage.  

3. Paying entry fees to sites of environmental and cultural significance gives you either: 

   1. free clothes; or

   2. a maths-related migraine.

4. If you’re looking to learn anything remotely useful about the history of a UNESCO World Heritage site, don’t go with me or Doug. 

For the Thumb Twiddlers:

On the left, an example of Type pm:

• Highest Order of Rotation (i.e. how many times does the pattern look the same in a complete 360º rotation): 1.

• Reflections (i.e. is there an axis in which the pattern be reflected): Yes.

• Generating Region or Motif (i.e the fraction of the plane that represents the smallest region that could generate the whole pattern): ½ unit. 

On the right, an example of Type p3m1:

• Highest Order of Rotation: 3.

• Reflections: Yes.

• Generating Region or Motif (i.e the fraction of the plane that represents the smallest region that could generate the whole pattern): ⅙ unit. 

Plus (crucially, or else it would be a p31m, no less): all 3 fold centres lie on the reflection axes… yep this one’s a little tricky to explain… I’m not even sure I totally understand.