On our patio in the Albayzin district of Granada we have a large olive tree. Like the lemon tree on the other side of the patio it is a force of nature. Every second year the crop of black olives is huge. In the past I have tried curing them to rid the bitterness. Without much success. 

The tree grows at such a phenomenal rate that it invades the windows of the house and when the olives ripen they fall onto the terra cotta paving and leave terrible black stains which only agua fuerte will shift.

So… two months ago I decided to kill two birds with one stone: heavily prune the tree when it was still full of olives, abandoning the harvest to the rubbish collectors. I left nine huge bundles of olive branches by the underground refuse bins one Saturday night. On Sunday morning they were gone and I spent the entire day with a pressure washer trying to clean up the patio.

A couple of weeks ago our neighbour María-Luisa bused. The postman had left a parcel with her as we were out. “What have you done with the olive crop this year?” she asked me. I sheepishly admitted that I had thrown it away. “Why?” she was incredulous. “I’ve got some of yours here”, she said disappearing into her house.

She presented me with a shallow plastic dish of gnarled looking black olives. A strong aroma of oregano pervaded the dish. “I made these from one of the branches that hung over my patio” she proudly announced, pushing them on me. “They’re yours,” she said. They tasted delicious.

The huge lemon tree on our patio in the Albayzin district of Granada is, and always has been, ecological and entirely natural. And just as in the human population people are made in all shapes and sizes, so it is with lemons! In the photo there are a few of this year's plentiful crop. Most are round, the shape associated with lemons, but some are elongated and others well, just weird, as the photo shows.

Do they most closely resemble the faces of witches from Shakespeare's Macbeth? Or crab claws? Or were they speaking through open mouths when time froze?

Whatever, they are as wonderful as they are weird. And their juice is heavenly.

Author: Allan Hilder

Wherever you are in Spain, but particularly in Andalucia, you are likely to know the name of a small town in Las Alpujarras, even if you have never been there. Order a bottle of water in a bar, or buy one in a shop and the name you will mostly likely see emblazoned across it is Lanjarón, a place that is famous for water, in more ways than one.

This modest town was the first in Spain to bottle its spa water and you can still drink the water free of charge direct from the spring. There are also several fountains to be found throughout the town, where you can fill up your bottles before a walk or a day out. Lanjarón is also a spa town, and at the balneario you can find all sorts of treatments, from the cosmetic to the health-giving, that use the local water. 

But the one week of the year when you can really experience how important water is to the local community is from June 23rd, the Noche de San Juan, to June 26th. From midnight on the 23rd, everyone, old and young, resident and tourist, ready or not, will get wet as the biggest water fight in Spain, Europe and probably the world, begins. The aim? To soak and be soaked, before going off for a drink and a bit of a party. 

The biggest shock you will encounter is that a water pistol is not going to cut it; on the balconies of the main street you will see water hoses worthy of fire stations and the residents are not ashamed to use them. You can get your own back, at least a little, by buying a bucket before the fun starts (they are on sale everywhere), standing under a hose to fill it up, before throwing the contents at someone else. In less than an hour, the party has moved from one end of the town to the other, the main street is a river, and you will wish you had worn your swimsuit after all…

An evening in Spain, in any part of the country and nearly all year round, begins with el paseo, a leisurely stroll through the streets, meeting and greeting friends and family. It is the dividing line between the working day and the evening, signalling a slowing down of tempo, a shift from activity to leisure.

In summer, this glorious tradition is often made even better with the addition of an ice cream and in Granada, you will find that the best ice cream comes from Los Italianos on Calle Gran Vía de Colón. Many a Granadino will tell you that the start of spring is not marked by the weather, but by the first day that Los Italianos opens, usually in April. 

And, a bit like the breakfast tradition we mentioned last week this gentle walk enables you, as a resident, to learn several things. In Granada, for example, head to Plaza Nueva which, on a sunny evening, will be thronged with just as many locals as tourists and take a minute to sit and watch. You will see couples, families and groups of friends strolling along with, it seems, very little direction. They will be stopping and starting, chatting and moving on, stopping and starting again.

If anything is likely to show you how the Spanish interact, and how important such interactions are, this is it. People don’t necessarily make appointments to see someone; they simply head to the same place, bump into someone, catch up, move on. Though the Spanish might seem quite formal, in that they will often greet you with a handshake, el paseo demonstrates that, in reality, they can also be incredibly informal. Talking, greeting, walking, eating, these are all essential parts of Spanish life; it is lived outdoors with lots of others, not indoors with just a few; it is noisy, not quiet; its pleasures are everyday and for everyone. 

Back in 2008 if you wanted your name written elegantly in Arabic it used to cost €3. With the arrival of the crisis the street calligraphers dropped their prices. By 2011 you could get the same thing for €1. Today, for the first time in at least five years, the price has doubled to €2. A sign of things to come.....?

Granada is the city of the pomegranate…or is it?

It is pomegranate season in the northern hemisphere and, if you have spent any time in Granada, you will soon realise that this slightly grumpy-looking fruit is very much part of the city’s heritage.

Look at some of the beautiful painted pottery, and you will see a pomegranate is the main motif; look down and you’ll see pavement bollards are decorated with them, look up and you’ll see them hanging from the trees, especially in the Albaicín. Why? Because the city was thought to have been renamed after the fruit during the Moorish period and, now, it is Granada’s heraldic device (i.e. part of its coat of arms). 

However, the origins of where Granada gets its name from are in fact not quite so straightforward. The word ‘pomegranate’ in English is said to derive from medieval Latin, from the words for apple and seeded and in old French the fruit was known as the ‘pomme-grenade’ but the name of the city doesn’t derive from ‘grenade’ at all but from the Arabic word Garnata, which is said to mean ‘Hill of Strangers’. The original settlement was on the plain and therefore difficult to protect, so in the 11th century, the Berber ruler moved his home to one of the hills beside the Darro and the city that we now know was born. So, though the fruit is a wondrous image to have at the heart of a city’s identity, it is not the heart of its name!