a 55, Unexplored Spain 
many fresh species of birds, including :—nuthatch (not seen 
elsewhere in Spain), green woodpecker, common (but no azure) 
magpies, golden orioles, pied and spotted fly-catchers, grey 
and white wagtails (breeding), whitethroats and nightingales, 
longtailed tits, woodlarks, corn-buntings, rock-sparrows, and quite 
a number of warblers (spectacled, rufous, and subalpine, Bonelli’s 
and melodious willow-warblers), besides the usual common species 
—serins, chaflinches, robins, wrens, and so on. On the sterile 
upland plateaux, both here and in Castile, the black-bellied sand- 
grouse breeds, as well as stone-curlew, bustard, and the usual 
larks and chats. 
GRANADILLA 
At the extreme northern verge of the plain one encounters a 
singular survival of long-past and forgotten ages, the “ fenced 
city” of Granadilla, so absolutely unspoilt and unchanged by 
time that one breathes for a spell a pure medieval air. Grana- 
dilla is mentioned in no book that we possess ; but it stands there, 
nevertheless, perched on a rocky bluff above the rushing Alagén, 
and entirely encompassed by a thirty-foot wall. Not a single 
house, not a hut, shows up outside that rampart, and its single 
gate is guarded by a massive stone-built tower. 
This tower, we were told by a local friend, was erected after 
the “ Reconquest” (which here occurred about 1300), but the 
bridge which spans the Alagén, immediately below, is attributed 
to the Romans—more than a thousand years earlier! and the 
town itself to the Moors—a pretty tangle which some wandering 
archaeologist may some day unravel.’ That the Moors established 
a settlement here, or hard by, we are confident owing to the 
Immediately adjoining the south approach to the bridge over the Alagén is sculptured 
on the bluff a heraldic device representing a figure plucking a pomegranate (Granada) from 
a tree—the arms of Granadilla. There is an inscription, with date, beneath; but these we 
failed to decipher. 
