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Nowadays the old royal villa, deserted by crowned heads since Ferdinand’s days and fallen from its high estate to its present use of a hotel and pension, forms with its park the chief attraction of Castellamare, where English travellers are wont to congregate in winter, and Neapolitan and Greek seekers of pleasure or drinkers of medicinal waters resort in the hot summer months.
It was Ferdinand’s policy to take and hold, capturing stronghold after stronghold until all Granada was his. In a memorable pun on the name of Granada, which signifies a pomegranate, he said, "I will pick out the seeds of this pomegranate one by one." On a dark night in 1481 he fell suddenly on Zahara, a mountain town on the Christian frontier, so strong in itself that it was carelessly guarded.
The revenues of the monasteries, which had been principally supplied by the bounty of their most Catholic majesties, have been withheld since Ferdinand’s death, and the interests of these establishments being thus closely involved in the destinies of Spain, it is not wonderful that the brethren should be a little more knowing in Spanish affairs than in other branches of history.
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