CATHOLIC GRANADA 85 



posterior to the Reconquest ; and it is well to 

 be a little on one's guard in the matter of the 

 numerous relics ascribed to the last Moorish 

 king. 



Of old Granada, in truth, not much more 

 remains than the buildings we have already 

 named. We may glance at the tower of San 

 Juan de los Reyes, so badly restored that its 

 peculiar Moorish architecture, more markedly 

 Eastern than that of any other Grenadine monu- 

 ment, has been almost entirely effaced. And in 

 the old Casa de Ayuntamiento there are some 

 historical curiosities, notably the original draft 

 of the charter granted to Granada by the Catholic 

 sovereigns, and the handsome official shield of 

 the city. Many sites, such as the Plaza de Bibar- 

 rambla, commemorated in the songs and stories 

 of old Spain, have been completely modernised. 

 But there is a monument a simple column 

 surmounted by an iron cross more deeply in- 

 teresting than any reared by the Moors. The 

 inscription on the pedestal records that on this 

 spot, on May 26, 1831, Dona Mariana Pineda 

 was publicly garroted at the age of thirty-two 

 years. She died a martyr for liberty and a 

 victim of the strange absolutist frenzy which 

 did much to ruin Spain in Ferdinand VI I. 's reign. 

 Dona Mariana's house had been a centre for 

 liberal gatherings, and when raided by the police 



