StingRAY Publications

There should always be a time for shutting the eyes, jumping in and worrying about the consequences later.  Thank god we weren’t wearing any clothes, or I’d have been scrubbing harbour sludge out of them for months.

A Saturday in December was a night out with friends and colleagues in Barcelona.  For some reason it had seemed like a good idea to jump off the harbour at 4am, failing to board a moored wooden yacht in the process, and probably for the best really.  But the swim had woken me up and by the time we were back at the hotel I was on a roll and I felt like it was time to go.  If I was to stay, it would be a case of extricating myself with a hangover from a Barcelona Hotel room the following day – I might even change my mind and go back to Scotland with everyone else.  It was time to make the break and with best wishes from all I ran down the hotel stairs and out the door: destination Dakar, Senegal.

In my haste however, I hadn’t checked the bus timetable, so with a four hour wait I ended up sleeping in the bus station, trying to grab forty winks while playing cat and mouse with the station master who moved me on every twenty minutes.  Despite a regular alarm clock, in the form of the pissed off Spaniard, I still almost missed the bus.

It was by coincidence that a friend of mine, Sam, planned to be staying in a cave in Granada, in the south of Spain.  Finding someone in a cave in a city sounded like a long shot, but I thought I’d give it a bash anyway.

The bus picked it’s way down the Coast of Spain, my hangover quite fittingly in full swing as I opened my eyes and Benidorm passed by the window.  It was 4am when the bus rolled into Granada, setting me out to another cold night in a bus station.   At this point at least it seemed unwise not to have taken a jacket.

The sun came up and the hunt for the cave was on.  I asked around but not knowing the Spanish for ‘cave’ proved awkward.   Even drawing a cave seemed difficult – it only became a cave when you drew a fire outside it for some reason.  Eventually an old man cottoned on to what I was looking for – older people seem to have more patience with language difficulties – waving his arm in a vague direction.  Following his arm, I walked up a hill, by the famous Alhambra, a palace where the walls are ornamented with such complex patterns that in modern terms they scarcely believe it possible to construct a building such as this, a fact which had almost earned it a place as one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World.  I’d have to say it was a little complicated for my taste – although impressive.  I continued on and as the city opened out beneath, the much more basic caves came into sight.  First there was one, then two, and then a whole hillside.  Which one would Sam be in?  There was only one way to find out – to ask around – and had it not been for my ensuing goose chase, I would never so quickly have worked out what the caves were all about.

There are about three hundred caves that sit above Granada looking out over the city.  The people who live in them, from all over Europe if not the world, are poets, sculptors, musicians, talkers, thinkers and more – probably amongst the most rag tag group of people I’ve met.  They live for free, recycling stuff from the streets, and earning a few extra Euros for alcohol or olives, amongst other things, from hair brained money making schemes.  You don’t have to pay any rent for any of the caves, at least not in this part of the world, and you could probably find an empty one if you just turned up, although you might have to be a little more patient for one of the better ones.

I arrived at lunchtime, when only a few people were milling about.  I met a Pole and an Australian who talked about the improvements they have been making to their caves. The Pole only works at night, under candle light, making an incredible, intricate wall in his cave – way more elaborate than to serve any functional purpose.  The Australian was just keeping to the basics, and fitting a door.

As it turned out that day, most people had gone to a rave on the other side of the city at 11am – it seemed like an odd time for a rave but I didn’t ask too many questions.  I met an Irish Guy, Oisín, who was wandering about with some whisky in order to get those left behind out of their beds.  On account of Sam’s Irishness I fancied Oisín might lead me to the man I was looking for, so I wandered round with him, helping out with the round, which is carried out like some sort of daily public service – the postal service, only it’s whisky not letters.

This is the ‘crazy’ Branca [cave community] and as I found out through the day there are five in total, including two Gipsy Brancas and one less chaotic one.  Unsuccessful with my hunt in the first one, I moved on.

In the second, more peaceful, Branca, the ingenious ways the caves had been developed showed that these residents had been living there for much longer.  The caves in this Branca sat into the terraced hillside, with small gardens and patios outside, where you could sit and look out over the city and pontificate. Inside, it seemed that if you wanted an extra shelf or another room, you just dug it out.  The caves sometimes went as far as having painted walls with pictures hanging from them, bedrooms and kitchens with electricity.  If you had a DVD player people would come from all over the hillside to watch a film.  I thought it was strange that this should all seem so amazing, after all, most houses would have had all this and more, but the fact they were caves somehow added an extra charm.

It was while knocking on doors that I realised how multinational the occupants were.  You weren’t sure how to start the conversation, what response you might get, how you might start communicating or where it might take you, but that was the thrill of it.  I doubt you would find such a cosmopolitan community even in New York, where nationalities are segregated into neighbourhoods.

I continued to trail about on the path to try and find Sam, joining the dots in a zig zag fashion from cave to cave.  For several hours I followed people’s directions but then realised this Sam, the one I was being directed to, bore no resemblance to my  friend.

I ended up drinking tea in a cave with a Polish/Czech couple – Roman and Ivona – whose cave I’d knocked on the door of.  We chatted for hours, emptying the tea pot several times as I learned about living in the caves.  I asked about the big building at the top of the hill – a delinquents school I had passed earlier where the children were playing football with the Gypsies.  Roman mentioned a girl had her arm broken when some Gypsies chased her out of her cave just recently.  He also mentioned that the City Council had planned to fill the caves in with concrete.  They certainly wouldn’t be the Council’s favourite neighbourhood as I couldn’t see them having much success collecting any kind of Council Tax from the caves.  It seemed that the constant threat of being evicted was part of living here.  The community had survived as an almost unique haven in Western Europe  - one which propagated a lifestyle which captured people’s imaginations.  Vague rumours of its existence, spread by word-of-mouth through Europe, North Africa and beyond, helped it attain a near mythical status and drew people in to visit or to live.  I left Roman and Ivona’s with a promise of a place to stay for the night should I need it.

It seemed like a hopeless mission – I gave up on finding Sam and walked back into the city.  He had been walking across the Pyrenees for several months, and a vague email sent a week previously was not enough to convince me he was in Granada at all.  But back in the city I was sitting in an internet café when he popped up in my inbox, and an hour later I met him under the Alhambra.  I laughed – I could have just let technology do the hard part in the first place, but where’s the fun in that?

We spent the next few days living in the caves – Michel (Israel), Acha (dog), Anna (Sweden) and Walter, a Canadian writer with a curiosity for everything.  Others came and went, Sergio arrived with Chai, sweet bread and songs.  The view that stretched out, looking down from the door of our cave to the glistening lights of the city in the valley, reminded me of something too big to comprehend….but strangely many things seem to make sense here.

[Note from Anna:]

Misha: Thank you for living in the cueva [cave] with us for a while. I am sure Africa will give you everything you need and more. I want to go there so much! Later, maňana maňana, whenever you want- come to Sweden! Just write or phone, and do it if you don’t come also, if you feel like it. Maybe one night under the stars in Africa, in the desert, in a phone booth, maybe you feel you need to speak with a Swedish person. Take care.

Much Love, Anna