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history of a gate
At the beginning of the last century, four entrepreneurs, who have since become deservedly infamous, wanted this decrepit obstacle to (their) economic progress torn down, and they naturally won out over the protests of the city’s intellectuals. Like the picturesque bridges in the center of town when the river was covered over, the gate was removed, and the only consolation of the “lovers of Granada” was to keep the stones of the original construction and, many years later, have them reassembled here in the Alhambra Forest, where the skeleton of the gate now stands, stripped of its barnacle-like appendages and forgotten among the fallen leaves.
The gap created by the demolition became a street with the same proportions as the gate and called "Callejón del Arco de las Orejas", a few steps from the Plaza de Bibarrambla. A chilling insight of the cruelty of life in the Middle Ages, both among “moros” and “cristianos”: although the established name of the gate was Bib-Rambla - "Gate of the Strand" - it got its popular name, “Arch of the Ears”, because during the Muslim period, the ears and other extremities of law-breakers were cut off in the square and then nailed to its walls for all to see. A well-known lover of Granada has said that they should have done the same with the ears of the four entrepreneurs...
from "Granada, City of My Dreams"
