The Great Granada Hunt: "Granada" = Pomegranate

The pomegranate plaque next to the entrance to our
lovely hotel, Hotel Zaguán del Darro.

So I still don't have time to write a very involved entry, but I've been sitting on a bunch of great photos for Granada for a really loooong time. Rather than write a more thorough entry on this famous overly-American-tourist-infested southern Spanish city, I thought I'd share with you a great photography game you can play when you visit there. I call it, the Great Granada Hunt!

Now, for those of you who didn't know, "granada" is Spanish for pomegranate. And it took me less than 2-3 hours upon arriving to the city of Granada to realize that they have pomegranate iconography run amok all over the place. (At one point I told my wife: "Man! Maybe they got a little carried away with this pomegranate stuff." To which she wisely responded: "I dunno. Can you imagine what it would be like if 'Valencia' actually meant something in Spanish? That something would be plastered on every official and unofficial wall of our city." Indeed, bats and oranges have already overrun Valencia, and I wouldn't be surprised if a motion was proposed to change the city name to Taronja or Rat Penat.)

Spot-a-pomegranate, the game: So here's how the game works. All you need is a camera and walking legs. Start looking for every instance of a pomegranate that you see and snap a photo. Pretty soon you'll have a wild collection of pomegranate footprints running all across the town.

Some ubiquitous instances of pomegranates in Granada are understandable. The "granada" appears in the lower right corner of the City's official seal. This naturally causes it to appear around town in various official capacities...

On street signs...

But also on the tourist guide signs...

To mark the fancy street name signs on the ground at street crossings on Gran Vía...

Even on utility covers...

But the City, in its zest for granadas, has also embedded them into the styled designs found in the ground all over the city and its landmarks...

And let us not forget what was easily the classiest touch: granadas used to form the tops of the cute posts that lined the streets to keep cars off the sidewalks...

And then there were the decorative fountains, which also naturally featured the city's favorite fruit...

"Fuente de las Granadas" next to the Río Genil

Even the fountain at Plaza Nueva is topped by a pomegranate

Look carefully and you'll see the granada adorning elegant facades of important city buildings...

At some point the denizens of Granada got into the game, because it's not just official buildings and emblems that are decorated with the distinctive fruit...

It's on metal flowerbed holders ...

... on the shop sign of one of many "Arab" shops on Calle de la Calderería ...

... on the entrance door to a residential building ...

... above the entrance door to a small church ...

Hah! I counted no less than 5 granadas on the journey up to and through La Alhambra, and that was without me even trying! Try finding some of these pomegranates while you wander through Spain's most famous monument...

Oh, my poor wife! At first my photo obsession irritated her. We'd be walking along, exhausted and eager to get to the next destination, and I'd be stopping every few steps, exclaiming, "There's another one! Just give me a sec while I snap a pic." (Confession: I have many, many more photos of granadas/pomegranates that I did not post.) But eventually even she got into it, spotting some of the harder to find ones, even showing a bit of sporting pride on her part about it. Spot the pomegranate is a great game, and a way to jazz up your more typical Spanish urban tourism visit. Granada is not just about the Alhambra. Apparently it is also about pomegranates. Go figure!

And as a prize for all your fun photo-documenting Granada's obsession with granadas, you can even buy yourself a ceramic decorative plate with, yes, you guessed it, a pomegranate on it...

________________ADDENDUM: THE VIEWER'S CHOICE________________

Thank you to one of my readers (José, whose comment is below) for pointing out that the pomegranate is also in the Spanish national seal ("escudo") at the center bottom, representing the Granada kingdom. It's quite an elegant design for a pomegranate, if I may say so!

Molly, a Granada expat blogger at Piccavey.com, tweeted me this photo of a 15th century fabric which, in its pattern, features granadas. She then wrote this blog entry on "Pomegranates..." with her own photo take on granadas in Granada.

Please keep them coming! Have you spotted a pomegranate in Granada recently? Couldn't resist snapping a photo? If you share it with me on twitter or through my email, I'll post it here with full credits to you.