The event will be held at the Casa Árabe Auditorium in Madrid at 7:00 p.m., with free entry until the room’s capacity is reached. Illusionist MagoMigue and Puerta Vílchez, an expert on Islamic art and a key figure in studies on the Alhambra in Granada, will be introduced by Ramón Mayrata, a poet, novelist and cultural critic with great knowledge about magic and illusionism.

After a first experience in the palaces of the Alhambra itself, MagoMigue and José Miguel Puerta are teaming up again at the Casa Árabe headquarters in Madrid to share the fascination they felt when they performed at that famous site in Granada, and to allow us to enjoy its magical, symbolic and poetic archetypes from a different perspective. The games of illusionism prepared just for this occasion by MagoMigue will be accompanied by artistic images and commentary by José Miguel, in a suggestive dialogue with the Alhambra’s forms and meanings, and with the audience’s imagination.

“Art has a trick to it. Although I don’t like that word, it does help to understand art more easily. Art holds two things within: what you can see, what remains, what happens; and behind that, the artist’s intention, the creative process, either by chance or causation perhaps... who knows? Art is a big magic trick. And magic lies at the origin of art.”  

“Being the work of art it is, the Alhambra was a true revelation to me: a place where I could disappear, and then reappear once again with the knowledge of something timeless, a place in which mystery, the force driving knowledge and art, can be found in every nook and corner. A stimulus for my senses channeled through its hermetic and poetic symbolism. A wonderful magic trick.”

“The sovereign’s stagecraft drinks from the poetics of imaginary suggestion, wonder and the unique, which Arab philosophers and rhetoricians have theorized about since times as far back as al-Farabi (in the year of 950)… We know that, amongst the obligations of those writing panegyrics, the mission of producing hyperbole about the exceptional nature of each work of architecture and its ability to inspire awe and astonishment in all hypothetical viewers was foremost. This is why the interplay between appearances was, in all their diversity, the artistic resource most cherished by the makers of these palaces, especially when it came time to give form to the symbols of light and permanence, which elevate the stature of their lords. Those builders conceived their work as great works of fiction elaborated using walls, columns, arches, doorways, glass, ceilings and domes, with waterways, spouts, fountains and plants, in addition to using various decorative and calligraphic schemes to creating the illusion of giving form in space to the shining, paradise-like imagined universe.”