The Persistence of the Past in the Albaicín: Granada’s New Mosque and the Question of Historical Relevance

Abstract

“For every Muslim, Andalusia exists as a romantic theme, a dream, a part of our poetry… But now it is not a dream; we are here as a community.”¹ With these words, Abdalhasib Castiñeira captured the joy of many of his fellow Granada Muslims in the wake of the long-awaited opening of the city’s impressive and monumental new “Great Mosque” (Mezquita Mayor) on July 10, 2003. Built at the summit of the historic Albaicín district adjacent to the Plaza de San Nicolás with its commanding vista over the city’s most famous artifact of its rich Islamic past—the Alhambra palace/fortress complex—the mosque’s inauguration attracted both national and international publicity. Global interest in the project owes principally to Granada’s powerful symbolic significance as the last outpost of Spanish Muslim rule that fell to the “Catholic Monarchs” Isabel and Fernando on January 2, 1492, marking the figurative culmination of the Christian “Reconquista,” and the passing of nearly eight centuries of Islamic political power on the Iberian Peninsula. That Islam has now “returned” to the city more than five centuries later in such a visible and symbolically powerful way poses a wide range of questions concerning local, regional, and national identity, as well as the meaning of Granada’s and Spain’s religiously plural past in shaping present conditions and realities.