King Fahd: the exact copy of the Alhambra in Riyadh of his disgraced favorite son

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Prince

(49) is the youngest and favorite son of the late King Fahd of Saudi Arabia.

In the shadow of his father, he amassed a fortune of 5,000 million dollars, which allowed him whims such as his impressive 147-meter-long yacht, which used to stop in Ibiza in the summers, his private jet, a Boeing 737, and numerous palaces and mansions for the world

, controlled the media, and many bet on his as his successor.

Something that did not happen, and finally, with his health seriously damaged by his

, he fell out of favor with his cousin, Prince Salman, the Saudi heir, who came to order his house arrest in 2018.

Abdelaziz was, like his father,

and when he went to visit him in the summer at his palace in

, in Marbella, he used to stop in Granada to contemplate a monument that was his obsession: the Alhambra.

He was so attracted by the beautiful Nasrid complex

that in 1997 he camped with tents, rugs, food and a large retinue on the Llano de la Perdiz, a plateau located above the Alhambra, from where the snowy peaks of Sierra Nevada and Sacromonte turning red at sunset.

They say that he

but he was denied and they even say that he offered a large sum to buy a part of the plateau and build a palace on the Alhambra, but he did not succeed either because it was public land.

, he made a decision: build his own Alhambra in the desert, a millionaire whim that

granted to his favorite son.

the Saudi capital, of 10.6 hectares, next to which an

, which was populated with forests with species brought from Australia, since the native plants of Granada could not resist the high temperatures of the desert.

Only the majestic peaks of Sierra Nevada are missing from the whole, impossible to clone and more than 50 degrees.

The Patio de los Leones, during its construction. CAMAR

The pharaonic project, nicknamed the

, began in 1998 and was completed in 2002, now 20 years ago.

With an area of ​​12,000 square meters, it reproduces every corner of the Nasrid Alhambra, including part of the wall and forest, but

, Christian constructions added in the 16th century, were eliminated.

Thanks to the original plans and designs, provided by the patronage of the Alhambra, to thousands of files with annotations and full-scale photos, the copy is so exact that it includes cracks and flaws.

Abdelaziz himself saw to it that the best historians, cartographers, architects, photographers, gardeners and Nasrid furniture experts were hired, as well as

.

The works were assigned to the prestigious French group Oger Internacional, and 150 technicians and more than 5,000 workers worked there, most of them Filipinos, who invested four years in what their ancestors from Granada took 7 centuries.

Prince Abdelaziz Bin Fahd.REUTERS

The sumptuous palace was covered with 1.6 million bricks, 500 white marble columns from the Almeria firm Camar, and more than 4,500 square meters of earthenware for floors, ceramics and hand-made tiles in the Ruiz Muros pottery in Otura.

Its artisans, whose ancestors settled in the Albaicín in the 16th century

for three years every night to measure each piece they reproduced.

In addition, Ramón Rubio, head of the Alhambra plasterwork restoration workshop, spent two months in Ryad leading the workers.

Of the 13 fountains,

the entire patio had to be thrown out because it was too small, and the fountain, made up of twelve different lions,

.

Despite the prodigious perfection of this

, some 21st century elements were introduced into the complex to condition it and a large underground nightclub was included under the Generalife that logically does not exist in its legendary Andalusian sister.

To this day, the

since those who participated in its construction are afraid to speak and few privileged people have been able to visit it.

They say that the sultans of Granada killed the architects who built the Alhambra to prevent its sublime beauty from being copied.

It does not seem that this extreme has been reached with the creators of its

, although all its workers were forced to sign a strict secrecy clause: whoever got out of the mouth would be immediately fired, subject to the consequences.

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