Calle Elvira

This guide to Calle Elvira in Granada opens with an old copla about three women in colorful dress, always three, always walking toward the Alhambra at three or four in the afternoon, and no one now remembers who they were meant to be. It follows how Federico Garcia Lorca collected the verse for his play Dona Rosita the Spinster, and how the singer Paco Ibanez later set it to guitar, keeping the manolas alive in Spanish song. You'll also hear what a manola actually was, and how this street, once the backbone of the Moorish city, became the promenade where she was meant to be seen. Walk from the old Elvira Gate down toward Plaza Nueva to trace the same route the song describes.