A sad diagnosis of a Sad Town: Granada and the dream of the recumbent woman

In opposition to Baudelaire's Paris dream ("the intoxicating monotony of metal"), Ganivet hates what he calls "the Metallic Age." In one of his collaborations in El libro de Granada (Granada's book), published in 1899 by the so-called Cofradia del Avellano (Avellano's fraternity) over which he presided, he dreams about a town that looks like a recumbent woman resting her head on the red pillow of the Alhambra. The writer sees the town from the air, frozen after a volcano eruption. The article's title is "Las ruinas de Granada (Ensueno)" (Granada's ruins [Daydream]). It is not easy to know whether Ganivet prefers that rigid picture of the town-woman or whether he imagines that the metallic age will inevitably lead to the town's ruin. A town, however, that will endure forever in its/his (Granada's?, Ganivet's?) "intrahistory," in the same way that Unamuno considered the Spanish soul eternal (despite the controversy between Unamuno and Ganivet).