The PAG director presents Leer la Alhambra, by the professor José Miguel Puerta Vílchez

This morning at the Palace of Charles V, María del Mar Villafranca, Director-General of the Patronato de la Alhambra y Generalife (PAG), and José Miguel Puerta Vílchez, Professor of Art History, University of Granada, together with Augustín Núñez, editor of Edilux, and Jorge Lirola, chairman of the Fundación Ibn Tufayl de Estudios Árabes, presented the book Leer la Alhambra (‘Reading the Alhambra’). With this publication, Puerta Vílchez is promoting the knowledge about the true meaning of the inscriptions on walls and other architectural elements of the Alhambra.
Leer la Alhambra: Guía visual del monumento is a guide based on an intense research and analysis effort which goes beyond previous studies. Furthermore, it is an approach to understand better and more intensely the different areas of the palace, their uses and functions, as well as their forms and meanings. These were resulting from a refined and excellent concept of poetry as a means of political and spiritual power of their promoters, the kings of the Nasrid Court, who used this intelligent tool to perpetuate themselves.
What is new in this guide is the methodological approach developed by the author, who makes an analysis by comparing the epigraphic inscriptions on the Alhambra buildings with literary sources, especially the incomplete manuscript Dīwān, by Ibn Zamrak, compiled by the poetic king Yusuf III and held in the Muhammad Tawfiq al-Nayfar Collection, edited in 1997.
With this correspondence, the author was able to correct and define the differences between the written texts and the epigraphy, in the light of all possible meanings. The analysis is verified in consideration of the visitor’s tour through the monument, the exact location of the texts, their new translation and the modifications made during the adaptation and preservations processes in different areas of the Alhambra, with an obvious educational spirit.
Leer la Alhambra highlights the true meaning of Nasrid royal architecture, designed by the genuine rhetoric of power and disclosed today to those interested in having a closer look. This guide is a contribution to deepen our knowledge of this unique and exceptional heritage site.