left uncompleted. A
bas-relief of God the Father fills the semicircle of the main arch;
Moses and David occupy the lunettes.

The huge pilasters or buttresses of the church which run up east and
west of the entire composition are decorated with the enormous imperial
shields of Charles V, overshadowing in their vulgar predominance all the
exquisitely proportioned and delicate detail adjacent to them.

Some of the bays on the southern side of the Cathedral can be better
seen, as a small courtyard separates them from the adjacent building,
the episcopal palace. The others are choked by the Capilla del Pulgar,
the Royal Chapel and the sagrario.

This side of the church exhibits in its balustrades, its ornamentation
and the crocketed terminations and finials to the exterior buttresses,
what is far more interesting in the Plateresque style of Spain than the
purely borrowed and imitative features of the west and northern fronts.
Here appear in jeweled play of light and shade, in all their imaginative
and exquisite intricacy, those forms of carved string courses which were
developed by the Spanish Renaissance and were essentially Spanish and
national. You feel somewhere back of it the Moorish influence. It
presents all the richness, the magnificence and exuberant fancy which
characterizes the spirit in which its masters worked. The labor it
involved must have been enormous. The splendor of the solid lacework ten
to twelve feet high is thrown out by contrast with the naked walls which
it crowns.

The Capilla del Pulgar, which blocks the most westerly corner of the
south elevation, was named in honor of Hernan Peres del Pulgar, the site
of whose brave exploit it marks. In 1490, during the last siege of
Granada, he determined on a deed which should outdo all feats of heroism
and defiance ever performed by Moslem warriors. At dead of night, some
authorities say he was on horseback, others that he swam the
subterranean channel of the Darro, he penetrated to the heart of the
enemy's city and fastened with his dagger to the door of their principal
mosque a scroll bearing the words "Ave Maria." Before this insult to
their faith had been discovered, he had regained Ferdinand's camp.

A double superimposed arcade faces the southern side of the sagrario:
the lower story has been brutally closed and defaced by modern
additions, almost concealing its original carving. The upper story,
however, which forms a balcony, strongly recalls by