The Alhambra: Pablo looks for the lions (A1)
Pablo wants to see the Court of the Lions at the Alhambra in Granada. A clear Spanish story about the red walls, the Nasrid motto, and the twelve lions.
La Alhambra de Granada
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About this article
What you'll learn
Present tense and a simple past, ser and estar, and place words: palacio, muralla, patio, fuente, león.
Pablo climbs to the Alhambra in Granada because he wants to see the Court of the Lions. The text says that al-Hamra means the red one, that the walls repeat Solo Dios es vencedor, and that the Nasrid palaces are from the fourteenth century. The Nasrid kingdom ended in 1492. He also sees the Generalife, water from the Sierra Nevada, and the view from the Torre de la Vela. At the end he counts twelve marble lions.
After reading
Article learning block
Phrases, words, grammar, and quick practice from this text.
Phrases for training
Add useful phrases to SRS or mark them as already known.
Las entradas se agotan pronto
newThe tickets sell out quickly
Agotarse means to run out. The se here is not reflexive: nobody sells the tickets out, the verb simply works this way. Una entrada is a ticket for a monument, a concert or the cinema.
You need it to plan a visit in Spain, where the popular sites sell out weeks ahead.
Millones de personas la visitan cada año
newMillions of people visit it every year
La is a direct object pronoun standing for la Alhambra, and it goes in front of the verb: la visitan, never visitan la. Spanish places these pronouns before a conjugated verb.
Word order is the whole difficulty: the object comes before the verb, not after it.
tienen unos setecientos años
newthey are around seven hundred years old
Spanish gives age with tener, not with ser: tiene setecientos años, tengo treinta años. Unos in front of a number means about or around.
Reaching for ser here is the classic mistake: es setecientos años is not Spanish.
es patrimonio de la humanidad
newit is a world heritage site
Patrimonio de la humanidad is the fixed Spanish name for a UNESCO World Heritage site. It takes no article: es patrimonio, not es el patrimonio.
Spain has one of the longest World Heritage lists in the world, so the phrase turns up constantly.
El patio más famoso es el Patio de los Leones
newThe most famous courtyard is the Court of the Lions
Un patio is an inner courtyard open to the sky, the heart of both the Spanish and the Islamic house. Written with capitals, el Patio de los Leones is the name of this particular one.
Patio is one of the few Spanish words other languages borrowed unchanged, but the Spanish one is always inside the building.
combina arte, naturaleza e historia
newit combines art, nature and history
And is y in Spanish, but it turns into e in front of a word starting with the sound i, written i- or hi-: arte, naturaleza e historia; padres e hijos. The change stops the two vowels from merging.
A small rule that is invisible until you meet it once, and then you see e everywhere.
Key words
Vocabulary that carries the school-day topic.
Glazed tiles
azulejos
glazed tiles
Un azulejo is a painted ceramic tile. The word came from Arabic, like many Spanish words beginning with al-, and it has nothing to do with azul, blue, however much it looks like it.
That false link to azul is the trap, and azulejos cover walls all over Spain.
Hill
colina
hill
Una colina is a hill, smaller than una montaña. The Alhambra stands on one, which is why you can see it from the streets below.
Basic landscape vocabulary: colina, montaña, valle, río.
Fortress walls
murallas
walls of a fortress
Spanish has two words where English has one. Una muralla is the defensive wall around a city or a fortress; una pared is the wall of a room.
Choosing pared for a castle, or muralla for a bedroom, is noticed at once.
Summer
verano
summer
The four seasons are la primavera, el verano, el otoño and el invierno. Casa de verano is a summer house, which is what the Generalife was.
Seasons come up in every conversation about travel and weather.
Fountain, spring, source
fuente
fountain
Una fuente is a fountain and also a natural spring. The same word means a source of information: según fuentes oficiales, according to official sources.
Three meanings in one short word, and all three are common.
People, singular in Spanish
gente
people
La gente is grammatically singular even though it means many people: la gente es amable, la gente está aquí. Never la gente son.
Every learner says la gente son at first, and a Spanish ear catches it immediately.
Grammar in context
Patterns from the text worth noticing after reading.
Impersonal se
se ve toda la ciudad
you can see the whole city
In se ve toda la ciudad nobody is named as the one who sees: se ve means one sees, or you can see. The verb still agrees with the thing seen, so it is se ve la ciudad but se ven las montañas.
This se is on signs everywhere: se habla español, se alquila, se vende.
The best known one
es la más conocida
it is the best known one
The superlative is el or la + más + adjective. When the noun is already clear it is left out: la torre de la Vela es la más conocida, where la stands for la torre. A plain comparative would be más alta que las otras.
Dropping the noun is normal in Spanish and confusing the first few times.
Ser or estar
La Alhambra está en Granada
The Alhambra is in Granada
Location always takes estar, however permanent it is: la Alhambra está en Granada, Granada está en España. Ser says what a thing is: es un palacio, es una fortaleza. Both appear in the same paragraph here.
The usual rule of thumb, that estar is for temporary things, fails exactly here: a city does not move.
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