Did Bill Clinton say the sunset at San Nicolás is the most beautiful in the world?

What is Clinton supposed to have said?

If you've asked about the viewpoint in Granada, you've probably heard it like this: the President of the United States looked out from San Nicolás and declared it the most beautiful sunset in the world. You'll find the line in leaflets, on travel websites and in the patter of plenty of guides.

Put the versions side by side, though, and they don't quite match. The archive of Canal Sur, Andalusia's public broadcaster, says the President was keen for his family to see "the most beautiful sunset in the world", something he'd carried with him since he was a student. Mind you, that's how the archive puts it; they aren't Clinton's own words in quotation marks. In 2010 an article about the Alhambra told it differently: it was a student called Clinton who was bowled over by "the most beautiful sunset in the world", years before he became president. The same writer added that some people place the scene at another viewpoint, San Cristóbal, rather than San Nicolás, and that young Bill's impression probably owed a good deal to his state of mind.

President or student, San Nicolás or San Cristóbal: when a quote shifts this much depending on who's telling it, that's a fair sign nobody wrote it down at the time.

When was Clinton at the Mirador de San Nicolás?

This part is on record. In July 1997 Madrid hosted a NATO summit. On 9 July, in the evening, Clinton travelled to Granada with Hillary and their daughter Chelsea, accompanied by the King and Queen and by the Prince of Asturias, the heir to the throne. They toured the Alhambra and went up to San Nicolás to watch the sunset. After midnight, according to the White House record, they were back in Madrid. It was a few hours of sightseeing, no more.

Had he been to Granada before?

He had, and he said so himself. In February 2000 the King and Queen of Spain came to Washington, and in his toast at the state dinner Clinton recalled that he'd first gone to Spain in the spring of 1969, as a young graduate student. He went to Granada to see the Alhambra, he said: "I never got over it", and he promised himself he'd go back one day. Then, to laughter from the guests, he added that thanks to the King and Queen he'd once again seen the sun set over the plains of Granada, in rather better style than as a student.

Notice what he says, and what he doesn't. He talks about a promise kept and a sunset over the plain. He doesn't talk about the most beautiful sunset in the world. With a student in 1969 and a president in 1997, it isn't hard to see how the two visits got blended in the 2010 version.

So who said it?

The nearest thing to the famous line was spoken at that same dinner in 2000, and it was the King who said it. According to the White House transcript, Juan Carlos said the people of Granada had adopted the President's words as a slogan for their city, after Clinton declared that in Granada, facing the Alhambra, he'd seen "the most beautiful sunset he could remember".

In other words, someone who was there that evening credits Clinton with a personal compliment, the finest sunset he could remember, not a world ranking. When and to whom he said it, we don't know. The King doesn't say, and we haven't been able to check the Spanish papers from July 1997. What the toast does suggest, if we take the King's word for it, is that within three years the line was already working as a slogan for Granada. And slogans grow every time they're repeated: from "the best I can remember" to "the best in the world" isn't much of a leap.

Why does everyone repeat it?

Because it has everything a good travel line needs: a famous name, a superlative and a place where you can check it with your own eyes. Granada knows the pattern well. Its other great line, the rebuke Boabdil's mother is said to have aimed at her son as he lost the kingdom, was also written down decades later, from hearsay. We tell that one in Boabdil, the surrender of Granada and the Moor's Last Sigh.

The view, of course, never needed a president. In 1892 Manuel Gómez-Moreno's Guía de Granada was already singing the praises of the "splendid panorama" you get from this small square: the Alhambra, part of the city, the Sierra Nevada and the fields of the Vega, the fertile plain around Granada. More than a century before Clinton, the viewpoint already had its fans.

Where does the sun actually set?

Here's the twist. Get out a map: from San Nicolás, the Alhambra sits to the south-east of the viewpoint. Sunset, meanwhile, always happens out to the west, swinging north-west on long summer evenings and south-west in winter. Which means anyone gazing at the Alhambra at dusk has the sun at their back or at their shoulder, never straight ahead. That's Podtour's own calculation, and anyone can test it on a clear evening.

So what draws the crowds isn't the sun disappearing behind the hill but what its last rays do: they set the walls of the Alhambra glowing. What people are really watching is reflected light. And as it happens, Clinton's own toast didn't mention a sun behind the Alhambra; it mentioned one going down over the plain.

Fact or legend.

• Fact: Clinton toured the Alhambra and watched the sunset from San Nicolás on 9 July 1997, with his wife, his daughter, the King and Queen and the Prince of Asturias.
• Fact: he said himself in 2000 that he'd been to Granada as a student, in 1969, and that in 1997 he saw the sun set over the plains of Granada again.
• Attributed: "the most beautiful sunset in the world". The earliest version we've found is the King's, in 2000, and it speaks of the most beautiful "he could remember".
• Unconfirmed: where and when he said it; some place it at the San Cristóbal viewpoint.
• Podtour's calculation: facing the Alhambra, the sunset is behind you or to the side, never in front.

Where to hear it

Podtour tells this story on The Upper Albaicín: from San Nicolás to the Puerta de Elvira, at the stop "The sunset you can't see", right at the viewpoint with the Alhambra in front of you. Just before it, "Two towers on the same hill" tells the story of the two buildings that share the same view. Granada's free route is The Alhambra from Outside: Hill, Woods and Gates, and for the practical side of your trip there's our Granada guide.

Further reading

• RTVA, Archivo Canal Sur (Memoranda), "Visita de Bill Clinton a Granada" (citing the special programme Canal Sur 20 años, 25 February 2009). http://blogs.canalsur.es/documentacionyarchivo/visita-de-bill-clinton-a-granada/
• The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, "Remarks by the President and King Juan Carlos I of Spain in Exchange of Toasts at the State Dinner", 23 February 2000. https://clintonwhitehouse6.archives.gov/2000/02/2000-02-23-toast-remarks-by-president-and-king-juan-carlos-i-of-spain.html
• "Digest of Other White House Announcements" (entry for 9 July 1997), The American Presidency Project, UC Santa Barbara. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/224626
• J. Ortiz, "La Alhambra, seducción de seductores", Escritura Pública, no. 65 (2010), pp. 66–69; in the Alhambra's research repository. https://www.alhambra-patronato.es/ria/handle/10514/14209
• Manuel Gómez-Moreno, Guía de Granada, Granada, Imprenta de Indalecio Ventura, 1892, p. 436. https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_SMCObZEgJFsC