Throughout the years of my practice in the tourism sector, which started with me not having reached my 30’s yet, I had already done my own tour through Islamic tradition as ‘an insider’ and in particular the spiritual, more romantic and existential levels of it. I have very fond memories of a ‘solo’ summer trip I made to Damascus, back in 1998, I was 19 then. In fact after a few years into my Al-Andalus Experience project, I had even considered going to Damascus to continue my exploration on the Umayyad Dynasty and the origin of Islamic Civilisation, from over there, but that will probably never happen now as it has become clear over the years.

I can surely boil down the whole of my efforts in launching and working on a brand and service as “Al-Andalus Experience”, to one unresolved passion: Mastering, or finding and practicing with a master in, the art of Arabic Calligraphy. If I had grown up as a Taoist, it would have probably been a passion for Japanese Calligraphy, but growing up as a Muslim, it was Arabic Calligraphy, in spite of my own alphabet being the English one.

For obvious reasons, growing up in Spain in the wrong Era amongst the first, instead, I’ve learned in practice, all about Spain, its land and geography, history from pre-humanity, the lifestyle, and the mosaic of civilisations that have contributed to such a rich heritage and culture.

I have without realising it lived entirely through the Spanish Transition, still very present in our memory today. Since Covid though, I’ve mostly experienced, physical taxing, parenting taxing, business taxing, bureaucracy, the typical modern problems that derive to burn out and stress.

Intro

I'll be using this section to share some of my writing, adding a bit of motivation and an ounce of pressure for me to keep up a weekly writing routine.

My writing here covers different areas and needs, from professional to marketing, brand stories, anything I'm actively working on and topics that more than frequently, tickle my thoughts.

This website I built and wrote in just under three weeks now.

It is part of a local marketing experiment with specific goals, to offer my own professional services and channels of interaction and communication, to locals in person in Granada, Spain, then to the world, online or by arranging a meeting or trip here.

Half of those three weeks was actually writing the content in the main sections. The hardest was to more or less organise and classify the possibilities of my own professional experience, and weekly routines, my practice to the world. And I didn’t go about it “the easy way” either. Each piece I built with full intent, while inspiring by the order found in, the decorations of the Alhambra themselves.

Underlying Structure

As artist and educator, a regular collaborator and friend from a long way back, Adam Williamson describes three layers of structure when teaching Islamic pattern:

“Within Islamic art, there are three fundamental aspects:

geometry, biomorphic or arabesque form, and calligraphy.”

He describes these not as decoration, but as a working hierarchy:

geometry as the underlying grid,

vegetal form as living variation,

and calligraphy as meaning carried through time.

So this is how I have organised and displayed my regular work areas here, beyond the architecture of the Alhambra, into a rotating, creative and marketing weekly practice. This practice helps to keep me sane, active and inspired, while opening a door for others to work and grow professionally with me.

Starting a steady 20/80 weekly practice.

One thing at a time, While I’ve been learning to code since around 2016 in anticipation to my daughter being born in 2017, , writing, sharing and helping professionals. I can consider my conding journey has reached a new stage and from around a year back I’ve been feeling that urge and preparing myself for it. It is a new stage. New times, new problems, new challenges and above all, a new streamlined set of small challenges to face daily, coming our way.

I’m not talking about global geo-politics here, or not yet anyway. I mean the simple type of small daily life-work challenges and keeping a sound mind in general, though the professional and personal realm.

Things are distinctively different than just a decade ago, and the redundancy here is unintended, it is simply real. I have long been feeling a real need to jump out of the wardrobe here and do more of what I’ve always loved, starting with writing and applying everything I’ve learned and my daily duties as a post modern third class back office saavi from the later margin and male manifestation of a prodigious generation-X - we thrived in the 90’s-.

What you may find here

I’m sure I’m going to get ‘haters’, ‘trolls’, and cynicism but am probably more worried about my closest relatives reading me than someone across the globe. That’s a character trait I must bear with for now. In the past year I self-assessed myself being towards the edge of a spectrum when it comes to gracefully changing the target of my focus and attention. I won’t name it, I don’t like carrying ‘tags’, but I am certainly not in the comfort zone when it comes to sharing or showing my work, what I do, what I think about or who I am, with other people, unless they show some interest and I can expect some “approval” in return. So this is quite a jump to even be writing here again, like it is social media day-1. I know that is not the case. Who reads things now anyway? Everybody is prompting, or passively thinking about all of the things, that -besides not fully grasping-, have automated to passively be doing our work. Hm. Did we loose control yet? No that is not what I started to write about here, but is all relevant to why and how I write.

Personality traits, origins, training

I’ll make it easier here by providing a bit more context, starting with a few of my own perceived personality traits, in a positive key. I am usually restless, slow thinker, very empathetic, self-motivated to high energies but not always clear ends. My first professional training was that of a 24/7 military-influenced family business, all round assistant. This took me all over Spain driving my late Spanish step-father from site to site, meeting to meeting, or on my own to do errands. I did an average of around 3000km a week, but mostly on the road, the waters were calm so long as the speed gauge was over 150km/h. I was privileged to get a first hand transmission of many things from my Spanish step-father, including his passion and vivid narrative, from “Don Quijote de La Mancha”, and a fond analysis of the mountain tops, castles, forts, major historical battle fields, and even insights into the geological formations from Granada to Mecca, from him.

My actual father, he parted back to the UK, when I was around age 4. I did meet him numerous times, and received what may seem to be little from him, highly symbolic for me, obviously. In fact I will be writing directly about him, my father (British) because during the aftermath of Covid and my entire work/business, life I received a hand typed manuscript from a fellow friend who has known him for all these yeards. He gave me “a manuscript”, it is a whole book, so I am transcribing it. Slowly but steadily, I may be sharing a bit of that here also: The Book on The (Arabic) Letters. I’m not sure what format I’ll be publishing this to, but will be sure to share some advances on it here for now.

So what else will I be writing and sharing here?

I made myself a spreadsheet to list my main writing areas and topics, it is quite extended → Shift+Pasting directly from the spreadsheet to here →

Who I am · Who am I? · What I do · Digital vs physical · Coaching · What I think about questions Writing · Journaling · Photography · Art · AI · Productivity Tourism · Trips · Cities · Experiences Local development · Cities History · Traditions · Culture · Cities Gardens · Plants Local food · What I think about questions

Lost in -bilibgual EN/ES- translation

As per language… It took me about two weeks to build this website from scratch, but mostly it was the writing that slowed me down. While I did use the’ old Gipetto -Gpt- for coding, it gave me some headaches to get all of the forms kind of decent and onto my spreadsheets, like I like them. From there I can plug them into my calendar and then I can get notifications for any bookings, or trip dates that I’m expecting or need to work on!

Where I was going before rambling… is that I will translate it, to Spanish, one section at a time, probably without ‘ai’, because I find it writes like an encyclopaedia, or maybe it’s just me, I find it dry.

Talking about that. With my full stack ‘developer’ hat on…

I have a weak-spot for Google AppsScript.

Amidst learning to code and finding my way of survival into this post-modern era, over the past decade, I have developed a whole galaxy of custom code and low friction office solutions far beyond the specifics of my own business needs. Into the lands of ‘generic solutions” as a full stack developer, I’m currently building my own full stack node js multi-purpose “boiler plate”, and using it across two or three different projects, each to be launched at their own pace and time.

I started around 2015, using the free Google Workspaces over a couple of specific Google Business accounts. I used Google Sheets as the repository, and AppsScript as my universal office automations stack. Particularly over the past year or two, I’ve made special place for a pattern or mind-set I developed myself, this being: “Google Docs as an interface”. I found I use them differently to convention.

The now “traditional” cloud based Application Programing Interfaces that revolutionised our lives and the global economy, supporting popular portals, lke Amazon, Youtube or Facebook, have successfully made “computing” more available for a whole generation of communication engineers and self-learned “coders”. PHP, MySQL, NodeJs, React, ORMs, backend, front-end, server-client, processes, data flows, layers, contexts, API interfaces, logic modularity, layering and isolation of “concerns” and now, also LLM, AI, available to “fill in logic gaps” on every step. We are undoubtedly living a new revolution. However, we also face the challenge of keeping up, to a faster pace, and not losing our own ancestral wisdom, human needs, nor running humanity in the process either. We certainly do need to find our place and learn to position ourselves, both professionally and regarding our own personal wellness, in these sophisticated, highly tech demanding new times.

Where I am going to is that for many daily small or large, repetitive business or professional needs, a simple Google Doc, has nothing to envy over an expensive and complex custom built web application, and you can also use sophisticated and dynamic web application patterns, using a google document as an interface.

Whether it is for taking a simple Minimum Viable Product fast to validate it on the real market, or making internal tools to speed up department procedures - repetitive processes, schedule marketing emails, generate leads, respond to form inputs, generate quotation documents, or payment confirmations - a simple and free Google Workspaces with the right AppsScript framework and patterns, can become a full blown business suite and automations engine today.

Scaling up to a dedicated full-stack web application from there is always easier than starting from a blank page. I’m using Nodejs technology and React based stacks mostly for my own Web Application projects, after exploring options from NestJS and TypeORM as a full backend (https://api.alandalus-experience.com). The line of classical backend/business logic server vs frontend/client interfaces, has specially blurred now with the new hybrid NextJS/NuxtJS environments (https://alanza-coop-v12-44131795481.europe-west1.run.app/). These are exciting new industry breakthroughs, that combined with us all using AI to help us in most of what we do, are also viable in production time and what I call, thought to production friction.

Right now, part of this new artisan HTML website that you are reading right now, is an experiment. Me building a new static HTML template - one I can use or extend to deliver web projects from- while exploring integration options from the right Google Workspace custom AppsScript interface endpoints. It is actually nearly just as good as my NextJS Saas style web application and the rich features I have there, for many business needs, just that it is faster and the environment is steady, ready to build without investing months or thousands, into a fully dedicated WebApplication.

for my daily business needs, tourism activities, trip planning, managing bookings and toolsI built for my tourism brand “Al-Andalus Experience” since 2016.

A few months back, around April, I made another Google Docs based script I called specifically that “Dry-AI”, and, well it basically pipelined prompts through documents like a charm, using the documents as a surface, like here but to generate content, not to write it onto a website. Hasta pronto.

This will be my alternative to becoming a Youtuber, I hope.

1, 2, … TESTING, … 3

A link → https://alandalus-experience.com

A Title - *from my publishing Google Doc, is for now not reverenced in my code, appears as regular text -

A Heading 1

→ Heading 2

→ Heading 3

→ Heading 4

→ Heading 5

→ a bold paragraph

→ a paragraph

An ordered list

An unordered list:

or…

An image:

*seems images are not supported, for now in my “live writing” Google Doc based system here, when they are you will see a QR code above that links to the index of this “hand built” traditional artisan HTML website.

.

1, 2, … TESTING, … 3

A link → https://alandalus-experience.com

A Heading 1

→ Heading 2

→ Heading 3

→ Heading 4

→ Heading 5

→ a bold paragraph

→ a paragraph

An ordered list

An unordered list:

or…

An image:

*seems images are not supported, for now in my “live writing” Google Doc based system here, when they are you will see a QR code above that links to the index of this “hand built” traditional artisan HTML website.

.

This is where it all starts.

I’m going to paste my most recent yearly re-launching of Al-Andaus Experience brand below. This is ahead of a new up-date with full Web Application and enhanced multi-user roles and self service services being made available for real time trip planning, booking and managing, as well as most of the brand’s digital marketing needs, “in shaa a’ Allah”, early this 2026.

should mention a 20+ year awareness of a hyper sensitive ‘celiac’ condition, that has me thinking on the molecular level when doing simple things like making a coffee. Meanwhile, foreign in my own homeland and time, long uprooted British citizen, lover of humanity, nature and the nature of humanity. all ancestral traditions.

for my daily business needs, tourism activities, trip planning, managing bookings and toolsI built for my tourism brand “Al-Andalus Experience” since 2016.

Note to self

• I use strange words nowadays, like “Abstraction”, or “generalisation”, my brain is half structured like a machine, half LLM, mood vs flight for survival-, deep focus based

Intro

I'll be using this section to share some of my writing, adding a bit of motivation and an ounce of pressure for me to keep up a weekly writing routine.

My writing here covers different areas and needs, from professional to marketing, brand stories, anything I'm actively working on and topics that more than frequently, tickle my thoughts.

The Practice,

Story and Experience

I used to travel for experiences and knowledge.

Until I realised the experience of knowledge

is the journey itself.

I work with knowledge as something lived, practiced, and transmitted — not packaged.

My work brings together cultural journeys, applied concepts, and simple systems that help people understand place, work, and rhythm more clearly.

After more than twenty years across travel, landscapes, logistics, and systems, I now share what works — clearly, quietly, and at human scale.

My craft has unfolded over time, until designed as a stable practice.

Paper

Paper once mattered not because it was permanent, but because it could travel.

Copied by hand. Carried across borders. Memorised. Shared.

We humans have always trafficked with knowledge — across borders, through civilisations — as a way to extend our reality.

Great!

This works, so I will pick it up from here as my journal and pre-marketing, “behind-the-scenes”, a little bit of critical thinking? But not in a bad way, critical I guess means vital, core, and that is a nicer way to frame it for me.

This will be my alternative to becoming a Youtuber, I hope.

This website I built and wrote in just under three weeks now.

It is part of a local marketing experiment with specific goals, to offer my own professional services and channels of interaction and communication, to locals in person in Granada, Spain, then to the world, online or by arranging a meeting or trip here.

Half of those three weeks was actually writing the content in the main sections. The hardest was to more or less organise and classify the possibilities of my own professional experience, and weekly routines, my practice to the world. And I didn’t go about it “the easy way” either. Each piece I built with full intent, while inspiring by the order found in, the decorations of the Alhambra themselves.

Underlying Structure

Throughout the years of my practice in the tourism sector, which started with me not having reached my 30’s yet, I had already done my own tour through the inner and outer worlds if Islamic tradition, and in particularly the spiritual, more romantic and existential levels of it. That was mostly from my rebel teens into my “adulthood” 20’s. I have very fond memories of a ‘solo’ summer trip I made to Damascus, back in 1998. In fact after a few years into my Al-Andalus Experience project, my goal was to be able to travel back there, and continue my exploration on the Umayyad Dynasty and the origin of Islamic Civilisation, from over there, but that will probably never happen now as it has become clear over the years.

I can surely boil down the whole of my efforts in launching and working on a brand and service as “Al-Andalus Experience”, to one unresolved passion: Mastering, or finding and practicing with a master in, the art of Arabic Calligraphy. If I had grown up as a Taoist, it would have probably been a passion for Japanese Calligraphy, but growing up as a Muslim, it was Arabic Calligraphy, in spite of my own alphabet being the English one.

For obvious reasons, growing up in Spain in the wrong Era amongst the first, instead, I’ve learned in practice, all about Spain, its land and geography, history from pre-humanity, the lifestyle, and the mosaic of civilisations that have contributed to such a rich heritage and culture.

I have without realising it lived entirely through the Spanish Transition, still very present in our memory today. Since Covid though, I’ve mostly experienced, physical taxing, parenting taxing, business taxing, bureaucracy, the typical modern problems that derive to burn out and stress.

This new start, an outlet of possibilities: layered availability, structured productivity, and above all, methodic closure.

Artist and educator Adam Williamson, a regular collaborator and friend, from a long way back, describes three layers of structure when he is teaching Islamic pattern:

“Within Islamic art, there are three fundamental aspects:

geometry, biomorphic or arabesque form, and calligraphy.”

geometry is the underlying grid,

vegetal form is living variation,

and calligraphy is meaning,

The three elements blend together, into potentially infinite expressions though space. Symbols for the expansion and contraction of the Universe, or Existence itself, which are preserved through time for us to delight upon through this unique form of art.

Beyond the harmonizing architecture of the Alhambra, I’ve organised and displayed my regular work areas into a rotating, creative and marketing weekly practice, inspired by these three levels of abstraction

Providing an inspired order to my professional practice, helps to keep me sane, active and inspired, while opening a door for others to work and grow professionally with me.

Starting a steady 20/80 weekly practice.

One thing at a time, while I’ve been learning to code since around 2016 in anticipation of of daughter being born in 2017, , writing, sharing and helping professionals. I can consider my coding journey has reached a new stage and from around a year back I’ve been feeling that urge and preparing myself for it. It is a new stage. New times, new problems, new challenges and above all, a new streamlined set of small challenges to face daily, coming our way.

I’m not talking about global geo-politics here, or not yet anyway. I mean the simple type of small daily life-work challenges and keeping a sound mind in general, though the professional and personal realm.

Things are distinctively different than just a decade ago, and the redundancy here is unintended, it is simply real. I have long been feeling a real need to jump out of the wardrobe here and do more of what I’ve always loved, starting with writing and applying everything I’ve learned and my daily duties as a post modern third class back office saavi from the later margin and male manifestation of a prodigious generation-X - we thrived in the 90’s-.

What you may find here

I’m sure I’m going to get ‘haters’, ‘trolls’, and cynicism but am probably more worried about my closest relatives reading me than someone across the globe. That’s a character trait I must bear with for now. In the past year I self-assessed myself being towards the edge of a spectrum when it comes to gracefully changing the target of my focus and attention. I won’t name it, I don’t like carrying ‘tags’, but I am certainly not in the comfort zone when it comes to sharing or showing my work, what I do, what I think about or who I am, with other people, unless they show some interest and I can expect some “approval” in return. So this is quite a jump to even be writing here again, like it is social media day-1. I know that is not the case. Who reads things now anyway? Everybody is prompting, or passively thinking about all of the things, that -besides not fully grasping-, have automated to passively be doing our work. Hm. Did we loose control yet? No that is not what I started to write about here, but is all relevant to why and how I write.

Personality traits, origins, training

I’ll make it easier here by providing a bit more context, starting with a few of my own perceived personality traits, in a positive key. I am usually restless, slow thinker, very empathetic, self-motivated to high energies but not always clear ends. My first professional training was that of a 24/7 military-influenced family business, all round assistant. This took me all over Spain driving my late Spanish step-father from site to site, meeting to meeting, or on my own to do errands. I did an average of around 3000km a week, but mostly on the road, the waters were calm so long as the speed gauge was over 150km/h. I was privileged to get a first hand transmission of many things from my Spanish step-father, including his passion and vivid narrative, from “Don Quijote de La Mancha”, and a fond analysis of the mountain tops, castles, forts, major historical battle fields, and even insights into the geological formations from Granada to Mecca, from him.

My actual father, he parted back to the UK, when I was around age 4. I did meet him numerous times, and received what may seem to be little from him, highly symbolic for me, obviously. In fact I will be writing directly about him, my father (British) because during the aftermath of Covid and my entire work/business, life I received a hand typed manuscript from a fellow friend who has known him for all these yeards. He gave me “a manuscript”, it is a whole book, so I am transcribing it. Slowly but steadily, I may be sharing a bit of that here also: The Book on The (Arabic) Letters. I’m not sure what format I’ll be publishing this to, but will be sure to share some advances on it here for now.

So what else will I be writing and sharing here?

I made myself a spreadsheet to list my main writing areas and topics, it is quite extended → Shift+Pasting directly from the spreadsheet to here →

Who I am · Who am I? · What I do · Digital vs physical · Coaching · What I think about questions Writing · Journaling · Photography · Art · AI · Productivity Tourism · Trips · Cities · Experiences Local development · Cities History · Traditions · Culture · Cities Gardens · Plants Local food · What I think about questions

Talking about that. With my full stack ‘developer’ hat on…

I have a weak-spot for Google AppsScript.

Amidst learning to code and finding my way of survival into this post-modern era, over the past decade, I have developed a whole galaxy of custom code and low friction office solutions far beyond the specifics of my own business needs. Into the lands of ‘generic solutions” as a full stack developer, I’m currently building my own full stack node js multi-purpose “boiler plate”, and using it across two or three different projects, each to be launched at their own pace and time.

I started around 2015, using the free Google Workspaces over a couple of specific Google Business accounts. I used Google Sheets as the repository, and AppsScript as my universal office automations stack. Particularly over the past year or two, I’ve made a special place for a pattern or mind-set I developed myself, this being: “Google Docs as an interface”. I found I use them differently from convention.

The now “traditional” cloud based Application Programing Interfaces that revolutionised our lives and the global economy, supporting popular portals, lke Amazon, Youtube or Facebook, have successfully made “computing” more available for a whole generation of communication engineers and self-learned “coders”. PHP, MySQL, NodeJs, React, ORMs, backend, front-end, server-client, processes, data flows, layers, contexts, API interfaces, logic modularity, layering and isolation of “concerns” and now, also LLM, AI, available to “fill in logic gaps” on every step. We are undoubtedly living a new revolution. However, we also face the challenge of keeping up, to a faster pace, and not losing our own ancestral wisdom, human needs, nor running humanity in the process either. We certainly do need to find our place and learn to position ourselves, both professionally and regarding our own personal wellness, in these sophisticated, highly tech demanding new times.

Where I am going is that for many daily small or large, repetitive business or professional needs, a simple Google Doc has nothing to envy over an expensive and complex custom built web application, and you can also use sophisticated and dynamic web application patterns, using a google document as an interface.

Whether it is for taking a simple Minimum Viable Product fast to validate it on the real market, or making internal tools to speed up department procedures - repetitive processes, schedule marketing emails, generate leads, respond to form inputs, generate quotation documents, or payment confirmations - a simple and free Google Workspaces with the right AppsScript framework and patterns, can become a full blown business suite and automations engine today.

Scaling up to a dedicated full-stack web application from there is always easier than starting from a blank page. I’m using Nodejs technology and React based stacks mostly for my own Web Application projects, after exploring options from NestJS and TypeORM as a full backend (https://api.alandalus-experience.com). The line of classical backend/business logic server vs frontend/client interfaces, has specially blurred now with the new hybrid NextJS/NuxtJS environments (https://alanza-coop-v12-44131795481.europe-west1.run.app/). These are exciting new industry breakthroughs, that combined with us all using AI to help us in most of what we do, are also viable in production time and what I call, thought to production friction.

Right now, part of this new artisan HTML website that you are reading right now, is an experiment. Me building a new static HTML template - one I can use or extend to deliver web projects from- while exploring integration options from the right Google Workspace custom AppsScript interface endpoints. It is actually nearly just as good as my NextJS Saas style web application and the rich features I have there, for many business needs, just that it is faster and the environment is steady, ready to build without investing months or thousands, into a fully dedicated WebApplication.

A few months back, around April, I made another Google Docs based script I called specifically that “Dry-AI”, and, well it basically pipelined prompts through documents like a charm, using the documents as a surface, like here but to generate content, not to write it onto a website. Hasta pronto.

Lost in -bilibgual EN/ES- translation

As per language… It took me about two weeks to build this website from scratch, but mostly it was the writing that slowed me down. While I did use the’ old Gipetto -Gpt- for coding, it gave me some headaches to get all of the forms kind of decent and onto my spreadsheets, like I like them. From there I can plug them into my calendar and then I can get notifications for any bookings, or trip dates that I’m expecting or need to work on!

Where I was going to before rambling… is that I will translate it, to Spanish, one section at a time, probably without ‘ai’, because I find it writes like an enciclopedia, or maybe it’s just me, I find it dry. Ah! A few months back, around April, I made another Google Docs based script I called specifically that “Dry-AI”, and, well it basically pipelined prompts through documents like a charm, using the documents as a surface, like here but to generate content, not to write it onto a website. Hasta pronto.

1, 2, … TESTING, … 3

A link → https://alandalus-experience.com

A Title - *from my publishing Google Doc, is for now not reverenced in my code, appears as regular text -

A Heading 1

→ Heading 2

→ Heading 3

→ Heading 4

→ Heading 5

→ a bold paragraph

→ a paragraph

An ordered list

An unordered list:

or…

An image:

*seems images are not supported, for now in my “live writing” Google Doc based system here, when they are you will see a QR code above that links to the index of this “hand built” traditional artisan HTML website.

.

The cool thing about this - customply hacked Google Dcs based - section …

…is that now I am a copy paste away from, sharing

any campaign, looking at it from an “already published” context or frame of mind. Before taking it from there, moving my writing through different platforms, pipelines, channels or feeds.

So, essentially…

This is where it all starts.

I’m going to paste my most recent yearly re-launching of Al-Andaus Experience brand below. This is ahead of a new up-date with full Web Application and enhanced multi-user roles and self service services being made available for real time trip planning, booking and managing, as well as most of the brand’s digital marketing needs, “in shaa a’ Allah”, early this 2026.

md /gateway-strategy /the-market-story

Molino⺢Practice

Master Codebase Guidebook

Markdown + HTML Dev-Docs Renderer - Frontend Client Module

Default Index

Open README.md

Root: README.mdthe-market-storyShow sidebarShow beta tools

⬆ Parent folder📁 images📝 chorrohumo_nasrid_study

H1The Many Lives of a Mountain of Smoke

H2An Atmospheric Study of a Nasrid-Era Chorrojumo — Granada, 14th Century

A recreational historiological exercise: separating the documented legend of Mariano Fernández Santiago "Chorrojumo" (1824–1906) from the atmospheric fabric of his world, then weaving that fabric backward through time to imagine the same spirit — the same instincts for commerce, story, and human connection — alive in the silk markets, caravanserais, and mountain roads of Nasrid Granada, when the Alhambra was young and the Silk Route still flowed through Iberia.

H2I. The Historical Anchor: Chorrojumo of Sacromonte

H3What We Know

Mariano Fernández Santiago, known universally as "Chorrojumo" — a contraction of chorro de humo (jet of smoke) — was born in Ítrabo around 1824 and died in Granada on 10 December 1906.[^2^][^4^] The nickname came from his trade as a blacksmith; the forge smoke that clung to him inspired the poetic moniker that would eventually eclipse his given name entirely.[^2^][^14^]

His life changed in 1868 when the painter Mariano Fortuny, visiting Granada on his honeymoon, encountered three Roma men singing at their forge. Fortuny was captivated by one figure in particular — dark-skinned, magnetic, commanding — and persuaded him to pose in an anachronistic "goyesco" costume: wide-brimmed hat, frilled shirt, sash, and boots.[^2^][^7^] The portrait, now in the Casa de los Tiros, launched a legend. Chorrojumo so loved the image that he adopted the costume as his daily attire, proclaimed himself "Prince of the Gypsies" and "Lord of the Forests of the Alhambra," and abandoned the forge forever.[^4^][^9^]

H3What He Actually Did

He died at 82, nearly blind, "chuleado by competitors who dressed like him and stole his business," collapsing from a cerebral hemorrhage while ascending the Paseo de la Alhambra — the same path he had walked thousands of times.[^4^] His son succeeded him as the second Chorrojumo; the figure disappeared after 1947 but lives on as one of the "cabezudos" (giant heads) in Granada's Corpus Christi procession.[^2^]

H3What This Tells Us About the Type

Chorrojumo was not merely an entertainer. He was a nodal figure — a human junction where commerce, performance, hospitality, and social authority converged. He understood before anyone else in his community that the Alhambra's romantic aura was a commodity, that foreign visitors would pay not just for information but for atmosphere, for the feeling of having been initiated into something ancient and secret. He was, in modern terms, an experience designer operating within a pre-industrial economy of attention.

The fact that he emerged from the forge is symbolically significant. Blacksmiths in Roma communities have always occupied a position of special respect — working with fire and metal, creating tools that enable all other trades.[^1^] The forge was where the community's material infrastructure was born; Chorrojumo simply recognized that the community's immaterial infrastructure — its stories, its image, its mystique — could be forged too.

H2II. The Imaginary Character: A Nasrid-Era Chorrojumo

H3Name and Identity

We shall call him Yusuf al-Hadidi — "Yusuf the Smith" — though his family and close associates might use a nickname born of some childhood trait or memorable deed. He is in his late forties, weathered but vigorous, with the muscular forearms of a man who has worked metal since boyhood and the observant eyes of one who has learned to read faces, measure intentions, and calculate value in a glance.

He belongs to a community of itinerant metalworkers and craftsmen whose ancestors followed the trade routes from the East — through Persia, Armenia, Anatolia, and North Africa — arriving in al-Andalus centuries before the Nasrids, possibly even contributing to the construction of the great monuments whose stories he now sells.[^36^] His people have no single name for themselves in this era; they are known by their trades — hadidin (smiths), qayyarin (tinkers), sullamin (ladder-makers, a metaphor for those who bridge worlds) — and by their habit of appearing where needed, then vanishing until the next season.

H3The Core Paradox

Like his 19th-century echo, Yusuf is simultaneously rooted and nomadic. His family's cave-dwelling on the slopes of Valparaíso (not yet called Sacromonte) is home — warm in winter, cool in summer, invisible to tax collectors and draft officers.[^10^] But his work takes him daily into the beating heart of Granada's medina, and his trade connections extend from the Alpujarra silk villages to the port of Almería, from the funduqs of the Alcaicería to the caravanserais of Córdoba and beyond.

He is, in essence, a connector — between city and mountain, between local and foreigner, between the visible economy of goods and the invisible economy of information, protection, and social credit.

H2III. Setting the Scene: Nasrid Granada, c. 1350

H3The City at Its Zenith

When the traveler Ibn Battuta visited Granada in 1349–1350, he called it "the metropolis of Andalusia and the bride of its cities."[^85^] He found a city of roughly 50,000 souls — modest by the standards of Damascus or Cairo, but extraordinarily dense with commerce, learning, and artistic refinement.[^61^] The Sultan Yusuf I (r. 1333–1354) was beautifying the Alhambra; the Madrasa Yusufiyya, al-Andalus's first public university, had just opened its doors; and the city's markets were stocked with goods from three continents.[^88^]

Granada in this era occupies a unique structural position. It is the last Muslim kingdom in Iberia, surrounded by Christian Castile to the north and west, buttressed by the Mediterranean to the south, and connected by sea and mountain pass to North Africa. This precarious geopolitical position makes it not a backwater but a funnel — one of the last places where the intellectual, artistic, and commercial currents of the Islamic world can flow freely into Europe, and vice versa.

H3The Commercial Geography

H3The Flow of Goods

Granada's economy rests on several intersecting trade streams. Silk is the most prestigious: the Alpujarra villages of Juviles, Válor, Ugíjar, Trevélez, and Pórtugos produce raw silk of quality exceeding Egyptian and Syrian competitors, exported via Genoese merchants from the Alcaicería.[^53^] Spices arrive by sea through Málaga and Almería — pepper, ginger, cinnamon, saffron, nutmeg — sold by the attarin (perfumers and spice merchants) in specialized souqs near the Great Mosque.[^17^] Agricultural products flow from the Vega plain — sugar (a luxury commodity), cereals, olives, fruit. Craft manufactures — leather, pottery, metalwork, taracea (wood inlay) — circulate both locally and for export.

The Genoese dominate maritime commerce; the Jews serve as interpreters, physicians, tax collectors, and intermediaries; and a constant flow of Maghrebi merchants, Maghrebi scholars, and Andalusi refugees from Christian territories keeps the city culturally vital.[^29^]

H2IV. The Character's Activities: Daily, Weekly, Seasonal, Yearly

H3Daily Rhythms

Yusuf's day is governed by the five prayers, the market bells, and the seasonal light. He rises before dawn, when the Albaicín is still cool and the only sounds are the muezzin's call and the clatter of early bakers.

H3Weekly Patterns

H3Seasonal Rhythms

H3Yearly Cycle

H2V. Income Sources: Direct, Indirect, and Administrative

H3Direct Income

H3Indirect Income

H3Administrative Methods

Yusuf keeps no written ledger — literacy is not his strength, though he can recognize names and numbers well enough to verify a contract witnessed by a professional scribe. His accounting system is mnemonic and social:

H2VI. The Character Network: Family, Helpers, Associates

The network below is organized not by formal hierarchy but by proximity of trust and regularity of interaction. Some figures are named; others represent collective types that would have existed as multiple individuals but can be understood through a single representative.

H3The Inner Circle: Family and Household

H3The Right Hand: Close Business Associates

H3The Second Circle: Regular Collaborators

H3The Third Circle: Occasional but Important

H3The Outer Layer: The Unclassified Web

Beyond these circles lies a penumbra of relationships too varied to categorize: the olive farmer who owes a favor, the Berber soldier who once needed a blade repaired, the widow whose dispute Yusuf mediated, the child he taught to shoe a mule, the poet who once shared tea and left with a story. These relationships are not monetized but constitute the social fabric within which all monetized activity becomes possible.

H2VII. The Caravan Return: A Journey from Córdoba

The following scenario illustrates how Yusuf's network functions in practice — not as a formal organization but as a living web of mutual obligation and shared enterprise.

H3The Departure (Three Weeks Prior)

A Granada-based caravan departed for Córdoba bearing: raw silk from the Alpujarra (tax payment to the Castilian crown, as Granada is a tributary state); finished ceramics and leatherwork for the Córdoba market; a diplomatic letter from the Nasrid chancery; and four foreign merchants seeking passage north. Yusuf's role: organizing the mule train through Tariq al-Sayyad, brokering the transport contracts, and connecting the foreign merchants to the caravan leader.

H3The Return Journey (Late Autumn)

The caravan now returns, lighter in body but heavier in purse and story. The composition has changed:

H3The Road Home

The journey takes five days along the Roman road through Alcalá la Real, Alcaudete, and Baena. Evenings are spent at waystations — some formal caravanserais, some informal camps. The atmosphere on the return is relaxed, almost festive: the dangerous business of the journey (bandits, tax collectors, rival caravan interference) is largely behind them. The Berber musician plays; Yusuf tells stories of the Alhambra's construction to the fascinated Córdobans; Tariq teaches Musa the subtle art of reading a mule's mood. Accounts are settled around the fire — who owes what, who has profited, who has lost, what the next season will bring.

The widow sits apart, sewing, but Yasmin (who has accompanied her mother to meet the caravan at a rendezvous point) brings her tea and learns that the woman knows a song from Fez that Fatima has never heard. By the time they reach Granada's gates, a new connection has formed — one that may yield nothing tangible or may, in three years, result in a marriage alliance, a business partnership, or a story worth a thousand dirhams.

H2VIII. Footnote: The Zirid Taifa Alternative (11th Century)

Had our character lived two centuries earlier, during the Zirid Taifa period (1013–1090), the fabric would be recognizably similar but the pattern significantly different.[^43^]

The Zirid-era character would likely spend more time on the road to Córdoba — a journey of political as much as commercial significance — and less time hosting international travelers. The absence of the Alhambra as a destination would shift his storytelling focus to the Albaicín fortress, the Great Mosque, and the legends of the Zirid kings themselves. The Jewish vizier's court would be a crucial node in his network, and the 1066 massacre (if he survived it) would mark a traumatic rupture in the community's social fabric.

H2IX. Visual Summary: The Character at a Glance

H3Yusuf al-Hadidi — Profile

H3The Network at a Glance

YUSUF AL-HADIDI (The Smith-Broker-Storyteller)

│

├── INNER CIRCLE (Family)

│ ├── Fatima (wife/manager)

│ ├── Musa (son/apprentice)

│ ├── Aisha (daughter/scribe)

│ ├── Umm al-Hadidi (mother/advisor)

│ └── Extended household

│

├── RIGHT HAND (Close Associates)

│ ├── Abu Zakariya (Jewish scribe)

│ ├── Tariq al-Sayyad (muleteer)

│ ├── Sitt al-Bahr (coast connection)

│ └── Yaqub (Alcaicería shopkeeper)

│

├── SECOND CIRCLE (Regular Collaborators)

│ ├── Hassan the Potter (ceramics)

│ ├── Rafiq the Weaver (textiles)

│ ├── The Gatekeepers (access)

│ ├── The Bath Attendants (information)

│ └── The Madrasa Students (messengers)

│

├── THIRD CIRCLE (Occasional Partners)

│ ├── Caravan Leaders (bulk trade)

│ ├── Sufi Lodge Residents (spiritual/patronage)

│ ├── Christian Traders (cross-border)

│ └── Alpujarra Producers (raw materials)

│

└── OUTER WEB (Unclassified Relations)

├── Favors owed and held

├── Stories shared and accumulated

├── Protection given and received

└── Reputation as living capital

H3Visual Network Map

H2X. Concluding Notes: From Smoke to Silk

The historical Chorrojumo understood something that transcends his century: people do not travel merely to see things — they travel to feel transformed, to carry home a story that elevates them in their own social world. His genius was to recognize that the forge had given him not just a skill but a persona — the smoky, dark-skinned, elemental figure from the mountain — that could be transmuted into a kind of living theater.[^2^][^4^]

Our imaginary Yusuf al-Hadidi operates from the same instinct, though the theater is different. Where Chorrojumo sold the romance of a ruined Alhambra to 19th-century Romantics, Yusuf sells the vitality of a living one — a palace still being built, a court still dispensing justice, a Silk Route still flowing with silk and saffron and the murmur of a dozen languages. His forge smoke is the same; his gift for human connection is the same; his role as a nodal figure in a network of trust and exchange is the same.

What changes is the direction of the gaze. Chorrojumo looked backward, packaging nostalgia. Yusuf looks outward and forward — connecting, facilitating, translating between worlds. Both are masters of what the economist Albert Hirschman called the "art of voice" — the ability to resolve conflicts, build coalitions, and create value through communication rather than coercion.

In the end, the study of such a character — whether anchored in the documented 19th century or imagined in the 14th — reveals something about the deep structure of pre-modern economies. Before corporations, before contracts enforced by states, before advertising and brands, there were people like this: smiths who became storytellers, mountaineers who became cosmopolitan brokers, men and women whose primary capital was not land or gold but the trust they had earned, story by story, favor by favor, year by year.

The smoke from the forge rises. The silk passes through the market. The caravan departs at dawn. And somewhere, in a cave on a hillside, a man sharpens his tools, counts his knots, and prepares to meet the day's strangers — each one a potential story, each one a potential partner, each one a thread in the vast, invisible web that makes a city like Granada possible.

This study was compiled from historical sources including Ibn Battuta's Rihla, the Tibyan of Abdallah ibn Buluggin, archaeological reports from the University of Granada's MEMOLab, the Alhambra Museum collections, and extensive research on Nasrid economic and social history. All imaginary elements are identified as such and are grounded in documented historical patterns rather than fantasy.

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I'll be using this section to share some of my writing, adding a bit of motivation and an ounce of pressure for me to keep up a weekly writing routine.

My writing here covers different areas and needs, from professional to marketing, brand stories, anything I'm actively working on and topics that more than frequently, tickle my thoughts.

This website I built and wrote in just under three weeks now.

It is part of a local marketing experiment with specific goals, to offer my own professional services and channels of interaction and communication, to locals in person in Granada, Spain, then to the world, online or by arranging a meeting or trip here.

Half of those three weeks was actually writing the content in the main sections. The hardest was to more or less organise and classify the possibilities of my own professional experience, and weekly routines, my practice to the world. And I didn’t go about it “the easy way” either. Each piece I built with full intent, while inspiring by the order found in, the decorations of the Alhambra themselves.

Underlying Structure

As artist and educator, a regular collaborator and friend from a long way back, Adam Williamson describes three layers of structure when teaching Islamic pattern:

“Within Islamic art, there are three fundamental aspects:

geometry, biomorphic or arabesque form, and calligraphy.”

He describes these not as decoration, but as a working hierarchy:

geometry as the underlying grid,

vegetal form as living variation,

and calligraphy as meaning carried through time.

So this is how I have organised and displayed my regular work areas here, beyond the architecture of the Alhambra, into a rotating, creative and marketing weekly practice. This practice helps to keep me sane, active and inspired, while opening a door for others to work and grow professionally with me.

Starting a steady 20/80 weekly practice.

One thing at a time, While I’ve been learning to code since around 2016 in anticipation to my daughter being born in 2017, , writing, sharing and helping professionals. I can consider my conding journey has reached a new stage and from around a year back I’ve been feeling that urge and preparing myself for it. It is a new stage. New times, new problems, new challenges and above all, a new streamlined set of small challenges to face daily, coming our way.

I’m not talking about global geo-politics here, or not yet anyway. I mean the simple type of small daily life-work challenges and keeping a sound mind in general, though the professional and personal realm.

Things are distinctively different than just a decade ago, and the redundancy here is unintended, it is simply real. I have long been feeling a real need to jump out of the wardrobe here and do more of what I’ve always loved, starting with writing and applying everything I’ve learned and my daily duties as a post modern third class back office saavi from the later margin and male manifestation of a prodigious generation-X - we thrived in the 90’s-.

What you may find here

I’m sure I’m going to get ‘haters’, ‘trolls’, and cynicism but am probably more worried about my closest relatives reading me than someone across the globe. That’s a character trait I must bear with for now. In the past year I self-assessed myself being towards the edge of a spectrum when it comes to gracefully changing the target of my focus and attention. I won’t name it, I don’t like carrying ‘tags’, but I am certainly not in the comfort zone when it comes to sharing or showing my work, what I do, what I think about or who I am, with other people, unless they show some interest and I can expect some “approval” in return. So this is quite a jump to even be writing here again, like it is social media day-1. I know that is not the case. Who reads things now anyway? Everybody is prompting, or passively thinking about all of the things, that -besides not fully grasping-, have automated to passively be doing our work. Hm. Did we loose control yet? No that is not what I started to write about here, but is all relevant to why and how I write.

Personality traits, origins, training

I’ll make it easier here by providing a bit more context, starting with a few of my own perceived personality traits, in a positive key. I am usually restless, slow thinker, very empathetic, self-motivated to high energies but not always clear ends. My first professional training was that of a 24/7 military-influenced family business, all round assistant. This took me all over Spain driving my late Spanish step-father from site to site, meeting to meeting, or on my own to do errands. I did an average of around 3000km a week, but mostly on the road, the waters were calm so long as the speed gauge was over 150km/h. I was privileged to get a first hand transmission of many things from my Spanish step-father, including his passion and vivid narrative, from “Don Quijote de La Mancha”, and a fond analysis of the mountain tops, castles, forts, major historical battle fields, and even insights into the geological formations from Granada to Mecca, from him.

My actual father, he parted back to the UK, when I was around age 4. I did meet him numerous times, and received what may seem to be little from him, highly symbolic for me, obviously. In fact I will be writing directly about him, my father (British) because during the aftermath of Covid and my entire work/business, life I received a hand typed manuscript from a fellow friend who has known him for all these yeards. He gave me “a manuscript”, it is a whole book, so I am transcribing it. Slowly but steadily, I may be sharing a bit of that here also: The Book on The (Arabic) Letters. I’m not sure what format I’ll be publishing this to, but will be sure to share some advances on it here for now.

So what else will I be writing and sharing here?

I made myself a spreadsheet to list my main writing areas and topics, it is quite extended → Shift+Pasting directly from the spreadsheet to here →

Who I am · Who am I? · What I do · Digital vs physical · Coaching · What I think about questions Writing · Journaling · Photography · Art · AI · Productivity Tourism · Trips · Cities · Experiences Local development · Cities History · Traditions · Culture · Cities Gardens · Plants Local food · What I think about questions

Lost in -bilibgual EN/ES- translation

As per language… It took me about two weeks to build this website from scratch, but mostly it was the writing that slowed me down. While I did use the’ old Gipetto -Gpt- for coding, it gave me some headaches to get all of the forms kind of decent and onto my spreadsheets, like I like them. From there I can plug them into my calendar and then I can get notifications for any bookings, or trip dates that I’m expecting or need to work on!

Where I was going before rambling… is that I will translate it, to Spanish, one section at a time, probably without ‘ai’, because I find it writes like an encyclopaedia, or maybe it’s just me, I find it dry.

Talking about that. With my full stack ‘developer’ hat on…

I have a weak-spot for Google AppsScript.

Amidst learning to code and finding my way of survival into this post-modern era, over the past decade, I have developed a whole galaxy of custom code and low friction office solutions far beyond the specifics of my own business needs. Into the lands of ‘generic solutions” as a full stack developer, I’m currently building my own full stack node js multi-purpose “boiler plate”, and using it across two or three different projects, each to be launched at their own pace and time.

I started around 2015, using the free Google Workspaces over a couple of specific Google Business accounts. I used Google Sheets as the repository, and AppsScript as my universal office automations stack. Particularly over the past year or two, I’ve made special place for a pattern or mind-set I developed myself, this being: “Google Docs as an interface”. I found I use them differently to convention.

The now “traditional” cloud based Application Programing Interfaces that revolutionised our lives and the global economy, supporting popular portals, lke Amazon, Youtube or Facebook, have successfully made “computing” more available for a whole generation of communication engineers and self-learned “coders”. PHP, MySQL, NodeJs, React, ORMs, backend, front-end, server-client, processes, data flows, layers, contexts, API interfaces, logic modularity, layering and isolation of “concerns” and now, also LLM, AI, available to “fill in logic gaps” on every step. We are undoubtedly living a new revolution. However, we also face the challenge of keeping up, to a faster pace, and not losing our own ancestral wisdom, human needs, nor running humanity in the process either. We certainly do need to find our place and learn to position ourselves, both professionally and regarding our own personal wellness, in these sophisticated, highly tech demanding new times.

Where I am going to is that for many daily small or large, repetitive business or professional needs, a simple Google Doc, has nothing to envy over an expensive and complex custom built web application, and you can also use sophisticated and dynamic web application patterns, using a google document as an interface.

Whether it is for taking a simple Minimum Viable Product fast to validate it on the real market, or making internal tools to speed up department procedures - repetitive processes, schedule marketing emails, generate leads, respond to form inputs, generate quotation documents, or payment confirmations - a simple and free Google Workspaces with the right AppsScript framework and patterns, can become a full blown business suite and automations engine today.

Scaling up to a dedicated full-stack web application from there is always easier than starting from a blank page. I’m using Nodejs technology and React based stacks mostly for my own Web Application projects, after exploring options from NestJS and TypeORM as a full backend (https://api.alandalus-experience.com). The line of classical backend/business logic server vs frontend/client interfaces, has specially blurred now with the new hybrid NextJS/NuxtJS environments (https://alanza-coop-v12-44131795481.europe-west1.run.app/). These are exciting new industry breakthroughs, that combined with us all using AI to help us in most of what we do, are also viable in production time and what I call, thought to production friction.

Right now, part of this new artisan HTML website that you are reading right now, is an experiment. Me building a new static HTML template - one I can use or extend to deliver web projects from- while exploring integration options from the right Google Workspace custom AppsScript interface endpoints. It is actually nearly just as good as my NextJS Saas style web application and the rich features I have there, for many business needs, just that it is faster and the environment is steady, ready to build without investing months or thousands, into a fully dedicated WebApplication.

for my daily business needs, tourism activities, trip planning, managing bookings and toolsI built for my tourism brand “Al-Andalus Experience” since 2016.

A few months back, around April, I made another Google Docs based script I called specifically that “Dry-AI”, and, well it basically pipelined prompts through documents like a charm, using the documents as a surface, like here but to generate content, not to write it onto a website. Hasta pronto.

This will be my alternative to becoming a Youtuber, I hope.

1, 2, … TESTING, … 3

A link → https://alandalus-experience.com

A Title - *from my publishing Google Doc, is for now not reverenced in my code, appears as regular text -

A Heading 1

→ Heading 2

→ Heading 3

→ Heading 4

→ Heading 5

→ a bold paragraph

→ a paragraph

An ordered list

An unordered list:

or…

An image:

*seems images are not supported, for now in my “live writing” Google Doc based system here, when they are you will see a QR code above that links to the index of this “hand built” traditional artisan HTML website.

.

• I use strange words nowadays, like “Abstraction”, or “generalisation”, my brain is half structured like a machine, half LLM, mood vs flight for survival-, deep focus based

Great!

This works, so I will pick it up from here as my journal and pre-marketing, “behind-the-scenes”, a little bit of critical thinking? But not in a bad way, critical I guess means vital, core, and that is a nicer way to frame it for me.

I'll be using this document or delivery ‘chapter’ to share some of my writing, adding a bit of motivation and an ounce of pressure for me to keep up a weekly writing routine.

This will be my alternative to becoming a Youtuber, I hope.

My writing here covers different areas and needs, from professional to marketing, brand stories, anything I'm actively working on and topics that more than frequently, tickle my thoughts.

The Practice,

Story and Experience

I used to travel for experiences and knowledge.

Until I realised the experience of knowledge

is the journey itself.

I work with knowledge, skill and craft as something lived, practiced, and transmitted — living, not stale.

My work brings together cultural journeys, applied concepts, and simple systems that help people understand place, work, and rhythm more clearly.

After more than twenty years across travel, landscapes, logistics, and systems, I now share what works — clearly, quietly, and at human scale.

My craft has unfolded over time, until designed as a stable practice.

Website Theme ‘Pattern’

This is a new start, it is an outlet of possibilities: layered availability, structured productivity, and above all, methodic closure.

Artist and educator Adam Williamson, a regular collaborator and friend, from a long way back, describes three layers of structure when he is teaching Islamic pattern:

“Within Islamic art, there are three fundamental aspects:

geometry, biomorphic or arabesque form, and calligraphy.”

geometry is the underlying grid,

vegetal form is living variation,

and calligraphy is meaning,

The three elements blend together, into potentially infinite expressions though space. Symbols for the expansion and contraction of the Universe, or Existence itself, which are preserved through time for us to delight upon through this unique form of art.

Beyond the harmonizing architecture of the Alhambra, I’ve organised and displayed my regular work areas into a rotating, creative and marketing weekly practice, inspired by these three levels of “abstraction”

The three elements provide a unified order to my professional practice, that helps to keep me sane, active and inspired, while opening a door for others to work and grow professionally with me.

I’m Z,

a native English speaker raised in Spain,

with 15+ years in cultural tourism and my brand Al-Andalus Experience. This journey gave me a keen ear for narrative language and bilingual writing with cultural depth.

My approach starts with writing: brand stories, thematic guides, and articles that form the base of campaigns. Then it extends into guidance on choosing and optimizing your communication channels: from newsletters and social to sales funnels. I use both self-built Google Sheets/Docs + Apps Script tools and no-code automation so your content flows in weekly automated routines.

My path blends cultural tourism and technology, from storytelling to automation in Google Apps Script, NestJS, and beyond.

Soy Z,

inglés nativo criado en España, con más de 15 años en turismo cultural y mi marca Al-Andalus Experience.

Esa trayectoria me dio un oído especial para el lenguaje narrativo y la escritura bilingüe con contexto cultural.

Mi enfoque empieza con escribir: historias de marca, guías temáticas y artículos que dan base a campañas. Y continúa con acompañamiento para elegir o afinar tus canales de comunicación: desde newsletters y redes hasta embudos de venta. Uso tanto herramientas propias en Google Sheets/Docs + Apps Script como soluciones no-code para que tu contenido fluya en rutinas semanales y automatizadas.

Mi camino une mercado, cultura y tecnología, desde storytelling hasta automatización en Google Apps Script, NestJS y más.

Opciones de Colaboración

Sesiones de diagnóstico, proyectos guiados o acompañamiento técnico para que tus contenidos y procesos se mantengan vivos y eficientes.

🧭 Sesión de Diagnóstico

1:1 para mapear tus flujos actuales y definir puntos críticos de comunicación y procesos.

⚙️ Proyecto Guiado

Desarrollo conjunto de un sistema: desde plantillas y dashboards hasta automatizaciones personalizadas.

🤝 Acompañamiento

Retainer mensual: mejoras, iteraciones y soporte a medida. Comunicación directa y continua.

✍️ Servicios Directos

Redacción, campañas, automatizaciones a medida. Lo que necesitas hoy, entregado sin rodeos.

🎯 Coaching & Formación

Sesiones semanales o mensuales para ti o tu equipo. Aprende a usar y mejorar tus propios flujos digitales.

This is a simple HTML website I built and wrote in just under three weeks now.

I will use it for publishing some live writing directly from Google Docs, and as a parallel Spreadsheet based booking form to offer my own services and availability, to the modern world.

It is part of a local marketing experiment with specific goals, to offer my own professional services and channels of interaction and communication, to locals in person in Granada, Spain, then to the world, online or by arranging a meeting or trip here.

Half of those three weeks was actually writing the content in the main sections. The hardest was to more or less organise and classify the possibilities of my own professional experience, and weekly routines, my practice to the world. And I didn’t go about it “the easy way” either. Each piece I built with full intent, while inspiring by the order found in, the decorations of the Alhambra themselves.

And here it is, as a public, though slightly ‘hidden’ domain, for poster, postcard, or manual sharing, one person and section at a time. There are now two Google Documents feeding this section, and I desisted on investing more time on getting images into this specific Document to HTML rendering solution, because my goal was to just be able to write and publish, then re-read from a public context, and if it passes, then move the content further to social media or ‘campaigns’.

The result → https://alandalus-experience.com/qr

I'll be using this section to share some of my writing, adding a bit of motivation and an ounce of pressure for me to keep up a weekly writing routine.

My writing here covers different areas and needs, from professional to marketing, brand stories, anything I'm actively working on and topics that more than frequently, tickle my thoughts.

This website I built and wrote in just under three weeks now.

It is part of a local marketing experiment with specific goals, to offer my own professional services and channels of interaction and communication, to locals in person in Granada, Spain, then to the world, online or by arranging a meeting or trip here.

Half of those three weeks was actually writing the content in the main sections. The hardest was to more or less organise and classify the possibilities of my own professional experience, and weekly routines, my practice to the world. And I didn’t go about it “the easy way” either. Each piece I built with full intent, while inspiring by the order found in, the decorations of the Alhambra themselves.

Underlying Structure

As artist and educator, a regular collaborator and friend from a long way back, Adam Williamson describes three layers of structure when teaching Islamic pattern:

“Within Islamic art, there are three fundamental aspects:

geometry, biomorphic or arabesque form, and calligraphy.”

He describes these not as decoration, but as a working hierarchy:

geometry as the underlying grid,

vegetal form as living variation,

and calligraphy as meaning carried through time.

So this is how I have organised and displayed my regular work areas here, beyond the architecture of the Alhambra, into a rotating, creative and marketing weekly practice. This practice helps to keep me sane, active and inspired, while opening a door for others to work and grow professionally with me.

Starting a steady 20/80 weekly practice.

One thing at a time, While I’ve been learning to code since around 2016 in anticipation to my daughter being born in 2017, , writing, sharing and helping professionals. I can consider my conding journey has reached a new stage and from around a year back I’ve been feeling that urge and preparing myself for it. It is a new stage. New times, new problems, new challenges and above all, a new streamlined set of small challenges to face daily, coming our way.

I’m not talking about global geo-politics here, or not yet anyway. I mean the simple type of small daily life-work challenges and keeping a sound mind in general, though the professional and personal realm.

Things are distinctively different than just a decade ago, and the redundancy here is unintended, it is simply real. I have long been feeling a real need to jump out of the wardrobe here and do more of what I’ve always loved, starting with writing and applying everything I’ve learned and my daily duties as a post modern third class back office saavi from the later margin and male manifestation of a prodigious generation-X - we thrived in the 90’s-.

What you may find here

I’m sure I’m going to get ‘haters’, ‘trolls’, and cynicism but am probably more worried about my closest relatives reading me than someone across the globe. That’s a character trait I must bear with for now. In the past year I self-assessed myself being towards the edge of a spectrum when it comes to gracefully changing the target of my focus and attention. I won’t name it, I don’t like carrying ‘tags’, but I am certainly not in the comfort zone when it comes to sharing or showing my work, what I do, what I think about or who I am, with other people, unless they show some interest and I can expect some “approval” in return. So this is quite a jump to even be writing here again, like it is social media day-1. I know that is not the case. Who reads things now anyway? Everybody is prompting, or passively thinking about all of the things, that -besides not fully grasping-, have automated to passively be doing our work. Hm. Did we loose control yet? No that is not what I started to write about here, but is all relevant to why and how I write.

Personality traits, origins, training

I’ll make it easier here by providing a bit more context, starting with a few of my own perceived personality traits, in a positive key. I am usually restless, slow thinker, very empathetic, self-motivated to high energies but not always clear ends. My first professional training was that of a 24/7 military-influenced family business, all round assistant. This took me all over Spain driving my late Spanish step-father from site to site, meeting to meeting, or on my own to do errands. I did an average of around 3000km a week, but mostly on the road, the waters were calm so long as the speed gauge was over 150km/h. I was privileged to get a first hand transmission of many things from my Spanish step-father, including his passion and vivid narrative, from “Don Quijote de La Mancha”, and a fond analysis of the mountain tops, castles, forts, major historical battle fields, and even insights into the geological formations from Granada to Mecca, from him.

My actual father, he parted back to the UK, when I was around age 4. I did meet him numerous times, and received what may seem to be little from him, highly symbolic for me, obviously. In fact I will be writing directly about him, my father (British) because during the aftermath of Covid and my entire work/business, life I received a hand typed manuscript from a fellow friend who has known him for all these yeards. He gave me “a manuscript”, it is a whole book, so I am transcribing it. Slowly but steadily, I may be sharing a bit of that here also: The Book on The (Arabic) Letters. I’m not sure what format I’ll be publishing this to, but will be sure to share some advances on it here for now.

So what else will I be writing and sharing here?

I made myself a spreadsheet to list my main writing areas and topics, it is quite extended → Shift+Pasting directly from the spreadsheet to here →

Who I am · Who am I? · What I do · Digital vs physical · Coaching · What I think about questions Writing · Journaling · Photography · Art · AI · Productivity Tourism · Trips · Cities · Experiences Local development · Cities History · Traditions · Culture · Cities Gardens · Plants Local food · What I think about questions

Lost in -bilibgual EN/ES- translation

As per language… It took me about two weeks to build this website from scratch, but mostly it was the writing that slowed me down. While I did use the’ old Gipetto -Gpt- for coding, it gave me some headaches to get all of the forms kind of decent and onto my spreadsheets, like I like them. From there I can plug them into my calendar and then I can get notifications for any bookings, or trip dates that I’m expecting or need to work on!

Where I was going before rambling… is that I will translate it, to Spanish, one section at a time, probably without ‘ai’, because I find it writes like an encyclopaedia, or maybe it’s just me, I find it dry.

Talking about that. With my full stack ‘developer’ hat on…

I have a weak-spot for Google AppsScript.

Amidst learning to code and finding my way of survival into this post-modern era, over the past decade, I have developed a whole galaxy of custom code and low friction office solutions far beyond the specifics of my own business needs. Into the lands of ‘generic solutions” as a full stack developer, I’m currently building my own full stack node js multi-purpose “boiler plate”, and using it across two or three different projects, each to be launched at their own pace and time.

I started around 2015, using the free Google Workspaces over a couple of specific Google Business accounts. I used Google Sheets as the repository, and AppsScript as my universal office automations stack. Particularly over the past year or two, I’ve made special place for a pattern or mind-set I developed myself, this being: “Google Docs as an interface”. I found I use them differently to convention.

The now “traditional” cloud based Application Programing Interfaces that revolutionised our lives and the global economy, supporting popular portals, lke Amazon, Youtube or Facebook, have successfully made “computing” more available for a whole generation of communication engineers and self-learned “coders”. PHP, MySQL, NodeJs, React, ORMs, backend, front-end, server-client, processes, data flows, layers, contexts, API interfaces, logic modularity, layering and isolation of “concerns” and now, also LLM, AI, available to “fill in logic gaps” on every step. We are undoubtedly living a new revolution. However, we also face the challenge of keeping up, to a faster pace, and not losing our own ancestral wisdom, human needs, nor running humanity in the process either. We certainly do need to find our place and learn to position ourselves, both professionally and regarding our own personal wellness, in these sophisticated, highly tech demanding new times.

Where I am going to is that for many daily small or large, repetitive business or professional needs, a simple Google Doc, has nothing to envy over an expensive and complex custom built web application, and you can also use sophisticated and dynamic web application patterns, using a google document as an interface.

Whether it is for taking a simple Minimum Viable Product fast to validate it on the real market, or making internal tools to speed up department procedures - repetitive processes, schedule marketing emails, generate leads, respond to form inputs, generate quotation documents, or payment confirmations - a simple and free Google Workspaces with the right AppsScript framework and patterns, can become a full blown business suite and automations engine today.

Scaling up to a dedicated full-stack web application from there is always easier than starting from a blank page. I’m using Nodejs technology and React based stacks mostly for my own Web Application projects, after exploring options from NestJS and TypeORM as a full backend (https://api.alandalus-experience.com). The line of classical backend/business logic server vs frontend/client interfaces, has specially blurred now with the new hybrid NextJS/NuxtJS environments (https://alanza-coop-v12-44131795481.europe-west1.run.app/). These are exciting new industry breakthroughs, that combined with us all using AI to help us in most of what we do, are also viable in production time and what I call, thought to production friction.

Right now, part of this new artisan HTML website that you are reading right now, is an experiment. Me building a new static HTML template - one I can use or extend to deliver web projects from- while exploring integration options from the right Google Workspace custom AppsScript interface endpoints. It is actually nearly just as good as my NextJS Saas style web application and the rich features I have there, for many business needs, just that it is faster and the environment is steady, ready to build without investing months or thousands, into a fully dedicated WebApplication.

for my daily business needs, tourism activities, trip planning, managing bookings and toolsI built for my tourism brand “Al-Andalus Experience” since 2016.

A few months back, around April, I made another Google Docs based script I called specifically that “Dry-AI”, and, well it basically pipelined prompts through documents like a charm, using the documents as a surface, like here but to generate content, not to write it onto a website. Hasta pronto.

This will be my alternative to becoming a Youtuber, I hope.

1, 2, … TESTING, … 3

A link → https://alandalus-experience.com

A Title - *from my publishing Google Doc, is for now not reverenced in my code, appears as regular text -

A Heading 1

→ Heading 2

→ Heading 3

→ Heading 4

→ Heading 5

→ a bold paragraph

→ a paragraph

An ordered list

An unordered list:

or…

An image:

*seems images are not supported, for now in my “live writing” Google Doc based system here, when they are you will see a QR code above that links to the index of this “hand built” traditional artisan HTML website.

.

• I use strange words nowadays, like “Abstraction”, or “generalisation”, my brain is half structured like a machine, half LLM, mood vs flight for survival-, deep focus based

Great!

This works, so I will pick it up from here as my journal and pre-marketing, “behind-the-scenes”, a little bit of critical thinking? But not in a bad way, critical I guess means vital, core, and that is a nicer way to frame it for me.

I'll be using this document or delivery ‘chapter’ to share some of my writing, adding a bit of motivation and an ounce of pressure for me to keep up a weekly writing routine.

This will be my alternative to becoming a Youtuber, I hope.

My writing here covers different areas and needs, from professional to marketing, brand stories, anything I'm actively working on and topics that more than frequently, tickle my thoughts.

The Practice,

Story and Experience

I used to travel for experiences and knowledge.

Until I realised the experience of knowledge

is the journey itself.

I work with knowledge, skill and craft as something lived, practiced, and transmitted — living, not stale.

My work brings together cultural journeys, applied concepts, and simple systems that help people understand place, work, and rhythm more clearly.

After more than twenty years across travel, landscapes, logistics, and systems, I now share what works — clearly, quietly, and at human scale.

My craft has unfolded over time, until designed as a stable practice.

Website Theme ‘Pattern’

This is a new start, it is an outlet of possibilities: layered availability, structured productivity, and above all, methodic closure.

Artist and educator Adam Williamson, a regular collaborator and friend, from a long way back, describes three layers of structure when he is teaching Islamic pattern:

“Within Islamic art, there are three fundamental aspects:

geometry, biomorphic or arabesque form, and calligraphy.”

geometry is the underlying grid,

vegetal form is living variation,

and calligraphy is meaning,

The three elements blend together, into potentially infinite expressions though space. Symbols for the expansion and contraction of the Universe, or Existence itself, which are preserved through time for us to delight upon through this unique form of art.

Beyond the harmonizing architecture of the Alhambra, I’ve organised and displayed my regular work areas into a rotating, creative and marketing weekly practice, inspired by these three levels of “abstraction”

The three elements provide a unified order to my professional practice, that helps to keep me sane, active and inspired, while opening a door for others to work and grow professionally with me.

I’m Z,

a native English speaker raised in Spain,

with 15+ years in cultural tourism and my brand Al-Andalus Experience. This journey gave me a keen ear for narrative language and bilingual writing with cultural depth.

My approach starts with writing: brand stories, thematic guides, and articles that form the base of campaigns. Then it extends into guidance on choosing and optimizing your communication channels: from newsletters and social to sales funnels. I use both self-built Google Sheets/Docs + Apps Script tools and no-code automation so your content flows in weekly automated routines.

My path blends cultural tourism and technology, from storytelling to automation in Google Apps Script, NestJS, and beyond.

Soy Z,

inglés nativo criado en España, con más de 15 años en turismo cultural y mi marca Al-Andalus Experience.

Esa trayectoria me dio un oído especial para el lenguaje narrativo y la escritura bilingüe con contexto cultural.

Mi enfoque empieza con escribir: historias de marca, guías temáticas y artículos que dan base a campañas. Y continúa con acompañamiento para elegir o afinar tus canales de comunicación: desde newsletters y redes hasta embudos de venta. Uso tanto herramientas propias en Google Sheets/Docs + Apps Script como soluciones no-code para que tu contenido fluya en rutinas semanales y automatizadas.

Mi camino une mercado, cultura y tecnología, desde storytelling hasta automatización en Google Apps Script, NestJS y más.

Opciones de Colaboración

Sesiones de diagnóstico, proyectos guiados o acompañamiento técnico para que tus contenidos y procesos se mantengan vivos y eficientes.

🧭 Sesión de Diagnóstico

1:1 para mapear tus flujos actuales y definir puntos críticos de comunicación y procesos.

⚙️ Proyecto Guiado

Desarrollo conjunto de un sistema: desde plantillas y dashboards hasta automatizaciones personalizadas.

🤝 Acompañamiento

Retainer mensual: mejoras, iteraciones y soporte a medida. Comunicación directa y continua.

✍️ Servicios Directos

Redacción, campañas, automatizaciones a medida. Lo que necesitas hoy, entregado sin rodeos.

🎯 Coaching & Formación

Sesiones semanales o mensuales para ti o tu equipo. Aprende a usar y mejorar tus propios flujos digitales.

This is a simple HTML website I built and wrote in just under three weeks now.

I will use it for publishing some live writing directly from Google Docs, and as a parallel Spreadsheet based booking form to offer my own services and availability, to the modern world.

It is part of a local marketing experiment with specific goals, to offer my own professional services and channels of interaction and communication, to locals in person in Granada, Spain, then to the world, online or by arranging a meeting or trip here.

Half of those three weeks was actually writing the content in the main sections. The hardest was to more or less organise and classify the possibilities of my own professional experience, and weekly routines, my practice to the world. And I didn’t go about it “the easy way” either. Each piece I built with full intent, while inspiring by the order found in, the decorations of the Alhambra themselves.

And here it is, as a public, though slightly ‘hidden’ domain, for poster, postcard, or manual sharing, one person and section at a time. There are now two Google Documents feeding this section, and I desisted on investing more time on getting images into this specific Document to HTML rendering solution, because my goal was to just be able to write and publish, then re-read from a public context, and if it passes, then move the content further to social media or ‘campaigns’.

The result → https://alandalus-experience.com/qr

I'll be using this section to share some of my writing, adding a bit of motivation and an ounce of pressure for me to keep up a weekly writing routine.

My writing here covers different areas and needs, from professional to marketing, brand stories, anything I'm actively working on and topics that more than frequently, tickle my thoughts.

This website I built and wrote in just under three weeks now.

It is part of a local marketing experiment with specific goals, to offer my own professional services and channels of interaction and communication, to locals in person in Granada, Spain, then to the world, online or by arranging a meeting or trip here.

Half of those three weeks was actually writing the content in the main sections. The hardest was to more or less organise and classify the possibilities of my own professional experience, and weekly routines, my practice to the world. And I didn’t go about it “the easy way” either. Each piece I built with full intent, while inspiring by the order found in, the decorations of the Alhambra themselves.

Underlying Structure

As artist and educator, a regular collaborator and friend from a long way back, Adam Williamson describes three layers of structure when teaching Islamic pattern:

“Within Islamic art, there are three fundamental aspects:

geometry, biomorphic or arabesque form, and calligraphy.”

He describes these not as decoration, but as a working hierarchy:

geometry as the underlying grid,

vegetal form as living variation,

and calligraphy as meaning carried through time.

So this is how I have organised and displayed my regular work areas here, beyond the architecture of the Alhambra, into a rotating, creative and marketing weekly practice. This practice helps to keep me sane, active and inspired, while opening a door for others to work and grow professionally with me.

Starting a steady 20/80 weekly practice.

One thing at a time, While I’ve been learning to code since around 2016 in anticipation to my daughter being born in 2017, , writing, sharing and helping professionals. I can consider my conding journey has reached a new stage and from around a year back I’ve been feeling that urge and preparing myself for it. It is a new stage. New times, new problems, new challenges and above all, a new streamlined set of small challenges to face daily, coming our way.

I’m not talking about global geo-politics here, or not yet anyway. I mean the simple type of small daily life-work challenges and keeping a sound mind in general, though the professional and personal realm.

Things are distinctively different than just a decade ago, and the redundancy here is unintended, it is simply real. I have long been feeling a real need to jump out of the wardrobe here and do more of what I’ve always loved, starting with writing and applying everything I’ve learned and my daily duties as a post modern third class back office saavi from the later margin and male manifestation of a prodigious generation-X - we thrived in the 90’s-.

What you may find here

I’m sure I’m going to get ‘haters’, ‘trolls’, and cynicism but am probably more worried about my closest relatives reading me than someone across the globe. That’s a character trait I must bear with for now. In the past year I self-assessed myself being towards the edge of a spectrum when it comes to gracefully changing the target of my focus and attention. I won’t name it, I don’t like carrying ‘tags’, but I am certainly not in the comfort zone when it comes to sharing or showing my work, what I do, what I think about or who I am, with other people, unless they show some interest and I can expect some “approval” in return. So this is quite a jump to even be writing here again, like it is social media day-1. I know that is not the case. Who reads things now anyway? Everybody is prompting, or passively thinking about all of the things, that -besides not fully grasping-, have automated to passively be doing our work. Hm. Did we loose control yet? No that is not what I started to write about here, but is all relevant to why and how I write.

Personality traits, origins, training

I’ll make it easier here by providing a bit more context, starting with a few of my own perceived personality traits, in a positive key. I am usually restless, slow thinker, very empathetic, self-motivated to high energies but not always clear ends. My first professional training was that of a 24/7 military-influenced family business, all round assistant. This took me all over Spain driving my late Spanish step-father from site to site, meeting to meeting, or on my own to do errands. I did an average of around 3000km a week, but mostly on the road, the waters were calm so long as the speed gauge was over 150km/h. I was privileged to get a first hand transmission of many things from my Spanish step-father, including his passion and vivid narrative, from “Don Quijote de La Mancha”, and a fond analysis of the mountain tops, castles, forts, major historical battle fields, and even insights into the geological formations from Granada to Mecca, from him.

My actual father, he parted back to the UK, when I was around age 4. I did meet him numerous times, and received what may seem to be little from him, highly symbolic for me, obviously. In fact I will be writing directly about him, my father (British) because during the aftermath of Covid and my entire work/business, life I received a hand typed manuscript from a fellow friend who has known him for all these yeards. He gave me “a manuscript”, it is a whole book, so I am transcribing it. Slowly but steadily, I may be sharing a bit of that here also: The Book on The (Arabic) Letters. I’m not sure what format I’ll be publishing this to, but will be sure to share some advances on it here for now.

So what else will I be writing and sharing here?

I made myself a spreadsheet to list my main writing areas and topics, it is quite extended → Shift+Pasting directly from the spreadsheet to here →

Who I am · Who am I? · What I do · Digital vs physical · Coaching · What I think about questions Writing · Journaling · Photography · Art · AI · Productivity Tourism · Trips · Cities · Experiences Local development · Cities History · Traditions · Culture · Cities Gardens · Plants Local food · What I think about questions

Lost in -bilibgual EN/ES- translation

As per language… It took me about two weeks to build this website from scratch, but mostly it was the writing that slowed me down. While I did use the’ old Gipetto -Gpt- for coding, it gave me some headaches to get all of the forms kind of decent and onto my spreadsheets, like I like them. From there I can plug them into my calendar and then I can get notifications for any bookings, or trip dates that I’m expecting or need to work on!

Where I was going before rambling… is that I will translate it, to Spanish, one section at a time, probably without ‘ai’, because I find it writes like an encyclopaedia, or maybe it’s just me, I find it dry.

Talking about that. With my full stack ‘developer’ hat on…

I have a weak-spot for Google AppsScript.

Amidst learning to code and finding my way of survival into this post-modern era, over the past decade, I have developed a whole galaxy of custom code and low friction office solutions far beyond the specifics of my own business needs. Into the lands of ‘generic solutions” as a full stack developer, I’m currently building my own full stack node js multi-purpose “boiler plate”, and using it across two or three different projects, each to be launched at their own pace and time.

I started around 2015, using the free Google Workspaces over a couple of specific Google Business accounts. I used Google Sheets as the repository, and AppsScript as my universal office automations stack. Particularly over the past year or two, I’ve made special place for a pattern or mind-set I developed myself, this being: “Google Docs as an interface”. I found I use them differently to convention.

The now “traditional” cloud based Application Programing Interfaces that revolutionised our lives and the global economy, supporting popular portals, lke Amazon, Youtube or Facebook, have successfully made “computing” more available for a whole generation of communication engineers and self-learned “coders”. PHP, MySQL, NodeJs, React, ORMs, backend, front-end, server-client, processes, data flows, layers, contexts, API interfaces, logic modularity, layering and isolation of “concerns” and now, also LLM, AI, available to “fill in logic gaps” on every step. We are undoubtedly living a new revolution. However, we also face the challenge of keeping up, to a faster pace, and not losing our own ancestral wisdom, human needs, nor running humanity in the process either. We certainly do need to find our place and learn to position ourselves, both professionally and regarding our own personal wellness, in these sophisticated, highly tech demanding new times.

Where I am going to is that for many daily small or large, repetitive business or professional needs, a simple Google Doc, has nothing to envy over an expensive and complex custom built web application, and you can also use sophisticated and dynamic web application patterns, using a google document as an interface.

Whether it is for taking a simple Minimum Viable Product fast to validate it on the real market, or making internal tools to speed up department procedures - repetitive processes, schedule marketing emails, generate leads, respond to form inputs, generate quotation documents, or payment confirmations - a simple and free Google Workspaces with the right AppsScript framework and patterns, can become a full blown business suite and automations engine today.

Scaling up to a dedicated full-stack web application from there is always easier than starting from a blank page. I’m using Nodejs technology and React based stacks mostly for my own Web Application projects, after exploring options from NestJS and TypeORM as a full backend (https://api.alandalus-experience.com). The line of classical backend/business logic server vs frontend/client interfaces, has specially blurred now with the new hybrid NextJS/NuxtJS environments (https://alanza-coop-v12-44131795481.europe-west1.run.app/). These are exciting new industry breakthroughs, that combined with us all using AI to help us in most of what we do, are also viable in production time and what I call, thought to production friction.

Right now, part of this new artisan HTML website that you are reading right now, is an experiment. Me building a new static HTML template - one I can use or extend to deliver web projects from- while exploring integration options from the right Google Workspace custom AppsScript interface endpoints. It is actually nearly just as good as my NextJS Saas style web application and the rich features I have there, for many business needs, just that it is faster and the environment is steady, ready to build without investing months or thousands, into a fully dedicated WebApplication.

for my daily business needs, tourism activities, trip planning, managing bookings and toolsI built for my tourism brand “Al-Andalus Experience” since 2016.

A few months back, around April, I made another Google Docs based script I called specifically that “Dry-AI”, and, well it basically pipelined prompts through documents like a charm, using the documents as a surface, like here but to generate content, not to write it onto a website. Hasta pronto.

This will be my alternative to becoming a Youtuber, I hope.

1, 2, … TESTING, … 3

A link → https://alandalus-experience.com

A Title - *from my publishing Google Doc, is for now not reverenced in my code, appears as regular text -

A Heading 1

→ Heading 2

→ Heading 3

→ Heading 4

→ Heading 5

→ a bold paragraph

→ a paragraph

An ordered list

An unordered list:

or…

An image:

*seems images are not supported, for now in my “live writing” Google Doc based system here, when they are you will see a QR code above that links to the index of this “hand built” traditional artisan HTML website.

.

• I use strange words nowadays, like “Abstraction”, or “generalisation”, my brain is half structured like a machine, half LLM, mood vs flight for survival-, deep focus based

Great!

This works, so I will pick it up from here as my journal and pre-marketing, “behind-the-scenes”, a little bit of critical thinking? But not in a bad way, critical I guess means vital, core, and that is a nicer way to frame it for me.

I'll be using this document or delivery ‘chapter’ to share some of my writing, adding a bit of motivation and an ounce of pressure for me to keep up a weekly writing routine.

This will be my alternative to becoming a Youtuber, I hope.

My writing here covers different areas and needs, from professional to marketing, brand stories, anything I'm actively working on and topics that more than frequently, tickle my thoughts.

The Practice,

Story and Experience

I used to travel for experiences and knowledge.

Until I realised the experience of knowledge

is the journey itself.

I work with knowledge, skill and craft as something lived, practiced, and transmitted — living, not stale.

My work brings together cultural journeys, applied concepts, and simple systems that help people understand place, work, and rhythm more clearly.

After more than twenty years across travel, landscapes, logistics, and systems, I now share what works — clearly, quietly, and at human scale.

My craft has unfolded over time, until designed as a stable practice.

Website Theme ‘Pattern’

This is a new start, it is an outlet of possibilities: layered availability, structured productivity, and above all, methodic closure.

Artist and educator Adam Williamson, a regular collaborator and friend, from a long way back, describes three layers of structure when he is teaching Islamic pattern:

“Within Islamic art, there are three fundamental aspects:

geometry, biomorphic or arabesque form, and calligraphy.”

geometry is the underlying grid,

vegetal form is living variation,

and calligraphy is meaning,

The three elements blend together, into potentially infinite expressions though space. Symbols for the expansion and contraction of the Universe, or Existence itself, which are preserved through time for us to delight upon through this unique form of art.

Beyond the harmonizing architecture of the Alhambra, I’ve organised and displayed my regular work areas into a rotating, creative and marketing weekly practice, inspired by these three levels of “abstraction”

The three elements provide a unified order to my professional practice, that helps to keep me sane, active and inspired, while opening a door for others to work and grow professionally with me.

I’m Z,

a native English speaker raised in Spain,

with 15+ years in cultural tourism and my brand Al-Andalus Experience. This journey gave me a keen ear for narrative language and bilingual writing with cultural depth.

My approach starts with writing: brand stories, thematic guides, and articles that form the base of campaigns. Then it extends into guidance on choosing and optimizing your communication channels: from newsletters and social to sales funnels. I use both self-built Google Sheets/Docs + Apps Script tools and no-code automation so your content flows in weekly automated routines.

My path blends cultural tourism and technology, from storytelling to automation in Google Apps Script, NestJS, and beyond.

Soy Z,

inglés nativo criado en España, con más de 15 años en turismo cultural y mi marca Al-Andalus Experience.

Esa trayectoria me dio un oído especial para el lenguaje narrativo y la escritura bilingüe con contexto cultural.

Mi enfoque empieza con escribir: historias de marca, guías temáticas y artículos que dan base a campañas. Y continúa con acompañamiento para elegir o afinar tus canales de comunicación: desde newsletters y redes hasta embudos de venta. Uso tanto herramientas propias en Google Sheets/Docs + Apps Script como soluciones no-code para que tu contenido fluya en rutinas semanales y automatizadas.

Mi camino une mercado, cultura y tecnología, desde storytelling hasta automatización en Google Apps Script, NestJS y más.

Opciones de Colaboración

Sesiones de diagnóstico, proyectos guiados o acompañamiento técnico para que tus contenidos y procesos se mantengan vivos y eficientes.

🧭 Sesión de Diagnóstico

1:1 para mapear tus flujos actuales y definir puntos críticos de comunicación y procesos.

⚙️ Proyecto Guiado

Desarrollo conjunto de un sistema: desde plantillas y dashboards hasta automatizaciones personalizadas.

🤝 Acompañamiento

Retainer mensual: mejoras, iteraciones y soporte a medida. Comunicación directa y continua.

✍️ Servicios Directos

Redacción, campañas, automatizaciones a medida. Lo que necesitas hoy, entregado sin rodeos.

🎯 Coaching & Formación

Sesiones semanales o mensuales para ti o tu equipo. Aprende a usar y mejorar tus propios flujos digitales.

This is a simple HTML website I built and wrote in just under three weeks now.

I will use it for publishing some live writing directly from Google Docs, and as a parallel Spreadsheet based booking form to offer my own services and availability, to the modern world.

It is part of a local marketing experiment with specific goals, to offer my own professional services and channels of interaction and communication, to locals in person in Granada, Spain, then to the world, online or by arranging a meeting or trip here.

Half of those three weeks was actually writing the content in the main sections. The hardest was to more or less organise and classify the possibilities of my own professional experience, and weekly routines, my practice to the world. And I didn’t go about it “the easy way” either. Each piece I built with full intent, while inspiring by the order found in, the decorations of the Alhambra themselves.

And here it is, as a public, though slightly ‘hidden’ domain, for poster, postcard, or manual sharing, one person and section at a time. There are now two Google Documents feeding this section, and I desisted on investing more time on getting images into this specific Document to HTML rendering solution, because my goal was to just be able to write and publish, then re-read from a public context, and if it passes, then move the content further to social media or ‘campaigns’.

The result → https://alandalus-experience.com/qr

I'll be using this section to share some of my writing, adding a bit of motivation and an ounce of pressure for me to keep up a weekly writing routine.

My writing here covers different areas and needs, from professional to marketing, brand stories, anything I'm actively working on and topics that more than frequently, tickle my thoughts.

This website I built and wrote in just under three weeks now.

It is part of a local marketing experiment with specific goals, to offer my own professional services and channels of interaction and communication, to locals in person in Granada, Spain, then to the world, online or by arranging a meeting or trip here.

Half of those three weeks was actually writing the content in the main sections. The hardest was to more or less organise and classify the possibilities of my own professional experience, and weekly routines, my practice to the world. And I didn’t go about it “the easy way” either. Each piece I built with full intent, while inspiring by the order found in, the decorations of the Alhambra themselves.

Underlying Structure

As artist and educator, a regular collaborator and friend from a long way back, Adam Williamson describes three layers of structure when teaching Islamic pattern:

“Within Islamic art, there are three fundamental aspects:

geometry, biomorphic or arabesque form, and calligraphy.”

He describes these not as decoration, but as a working hierarchy:

geometry as the underlying grid,

vegetal form as living variation,

and calligraphy as meaning carried through time.

So this is how I have organised and displayed my regular work areas here, beyond the architecture of the Alhambra, into a rotating, creative and marketing weekly practice. This practice helps to keep me sane, active and inspired, while opening a door for others to work and grow professionally with me.

Starting a steady 20/80 weekly practice.

One thing at a time, While I’ve been learning to code since around 2016 in anticipation to my daughter being born in 2017, , writing, sharing and helping professionals. I can consider my conding journey has reached a new stage and from around a year back I’ve been feeling that urge and preparing myself for it. It is a new stage. New times, new problems, new challenges and above all, a new streamlined set of small challenges to face daily, coming our way.

I’m not talking about global geo-politics here, or not yet anyway. I mean the simple type of small daily life-work challenges and keeping a sound mind in general, though the professional and personal realm.

Things are distinctively different than just a decade ago, and the redundancy here is unintended, it is simply real. I have long been feeling a real need to jump out of the wardrobe here and do more of what I’ve always loved, starting with writing and applying everything I’ve learned and my daily duties as a post modern third class back office saavi from the later margin and male manifestation of a prodigious generation-X - we thrived in the 90’s-.

What you may find here

I’m sure I’m going to get ‘haters’, ‘trolls’, and cynicism but am probably more worried about my closest relatives reading me than someone across the globe. That’s a character trait I must bear with for now. In the past year I self-assessed myself being towards the edge of a spectrum when it comes to gracefully changing the target of my focus and attention. I won’t name it, I don’t like carrying ‘tags’, but I am certainly not in the comfort zone when it comes to sharing or showing my work, what I do, what I think about or who I am, with other people, unless they show some interest and I can expect some “approval” in return. So this is quite a jump to even be writing here again, like it is social media day-1. I know that is not the case. Who reads things now anyway? Everybody is prompting, or passively thinking about all of the things, that -besides not fully grasping-, have automated to passively be doing our work. Hm. Did we loose control yet? No that is not what I started to write about here, but is all relevant to why and how I write.

Personality traits, origins, training

I’ll make it easier here by providing a bit more context, starting with a few of my own perceived personality traits, in a positive key. I am usually restless, slow thinker, very empathetic, self-motivated to high energies but not always clear ends. My first professional training was that of a 24/7 military-influenced family business, all round assistant. This took me all over Spain driving my late Spanish step-father from site to site, meeting to meeting, or on my own to do errands. I did an average of around 3000km a week, but mostly on the road, the waters were calm so long as the speed gauge was over 150km/h. I was privileged to get a first hand transmission of many things from my Spanish step-father, including his passion and vivid narrative, from “Don Quijote de La Mancha”, and a fond analysis of the mountain tops, castles, forts, major historical battle fields, and even insights into the geological formations from Granada to Mecca, from him.

My actual father, he parted back to the UK, when I was around age 4. I did meet him numerous times, and received what may seem to be little from him, highly symbolic for me, obviously. In fact I will be writing directly about him, my father (British) because during the aftermath of Covid and my entire work/business, life I received a hand typed manuscript from a fellow friend who has known him for all these yeards. He gave me “a manuscript”, it is a whole book, so I am transcribing it. Slowly but steadily, I may be sharing a bit of that here also: The Book on The (Arabic) Letters. I’m not sure what format I’ll be publishing this to, but will be sure to share some advances on it here for now.

So what else will I be writing and sharing here?

I made myself a spreadsheet to list my main writing areas and topics, it is quite extended → Shift+Pasting directly from the spreadsheet to here →

Who I am · Who am I? · What I do · Digital vs physical · Coaching · What I think about questions Writing · Journaling · Photography · Art · AI · Productivity Tourism · Trips · Cities · Experiences Local development · Cities History · Traditions · Culture · Cities Gardens · Plants Local food · What I think about questions

Lost in -bilibgual EN/ES- translation

As per language… It took me about two weeks to build this website from scratch, but mostly it was the writing that slowed me down. While I did use the’ old Gipetto -Gpt- for coding, it gave me some headaches to get all of the forms kind of decent and onto my spreadsheets, like I like them. From there I can plug them into my calendar and then I can get notifications for any bookings, or trip dates that I’m expecting or need to work on!

Where I was going before rambling… is that I will translate it, to Spanish, one section at a time, probably without ‘ai’, because I find it writes like an encyclopaedia, or maybe it’s just me, I find it dry.

Talking about that. With my full stack ‘developer’ hat on…

I have a weak-spot for Google AppsScript.

Amidst learning to code and finding my way of survival into this post-modern era, over the past decade, I have developed a whole galaxy of custom code and low friction office solutions far beyond the specifics of my own business needs. Into the lands of ‘generic solutions” as a full stack developer, I’m currently building my own full stack node js multi-purpose “boiler plate”, and using it across two or three different projects, each to be launched at their own pace and time.

I started around 2015, using the free Google Workspaces over a couple of specific Google Business accounts. I used Google Sheets as the repository, and AppsScript as my universal office automations stack. Particularly over the past year or two, I’ve made special place for a pattern or mind-set I developed myself, this being: “Google Docs as an interface”. I found I use them differently to convention.

The now “traditional” cloud based Application Programing Interfaces that revolutionised our lives and the global economy, supporting popular portals, lke Amazon, Youtube or Facebook, have successfully made “computing” more available for a whole generation of communication engineers and self-learned “coders”. PHP, MySQL, NodeJs, React, ORMs, backend, front-end, server-client, processes, data flows, layers, contexts, API interfaces, logic modularity, layering and isolation of “concerns” and now, also LLM, AI, available to “fill in logic gaps” on every step. We are undoubtedly living a new revolution. However, we also face the challenge of keeping up, to a faster pace, and not losing our own ancestral wisdom, human needs, nor running humanity in the process either. We certainly do need to find our place and learn to position ourselves, both professionally and regarding our own personal wellness, in these sophisticated, highly tech demanding new times.

Where I am going to is that for many daily small or large, repetitive business or professional needs, a simple Google Doc, has nothing to envy over an expensive and complex custom built web application, and you can also use sophisticated and dynamic web application patterns, using a google document as an interface.

Whether it is for taking a simple Minimum Viable Product fast to validate it on the real market, or making internal tools to speed up department procedures - repetitive processes, schedule marketing emails, generate leads, respond to form inputs, generate quotation documents, or payment confirmations - a simple and free Google Workspaces with the right AppsScript framework and patterns, can become a full blown business suite and automations engine today.

Scaling up to a dedicated full-stack web application from there is always easier than starting from a blank page. I’m using Nodejs technology and React based stacks mostly for my own Web Application projects, after exploring options from NestJS and TypeORM as a full backend (https://api.alandalus-experience.com). The line of classical backend/business logic server vs frontend/client interfaces, has specially blurred now with the new hybrid NextJS/NuxtJS environments (https://alanza-coop-v12-44131795481.europe-west1.run.app/). These are exciting new industry breakthroughs, that combined with us all using AI to help us in most of what we do, are also viable in production time and what I call, thought to production friction.

Right now, part of this new artisan HTML website that you are reading right now, is an experiment. Me building a new static HTML template - one I can use or extend to deliver web projects from- while exploring integration options from the right Google Workspace custom AppsScript interface endpoints. It is actually nearly just as good as my NextJS Saas style web application and the rich features I have there, for many business needs, just that it is faster and the environment is steady, ready to build without investing months or thousands, into a fully dedicated WebApplication.

for my daily business needs, tourism activities, trip planning, managing bookings and toolsI built for my tourism brand “Al-Andalus Experience” since 2016.

A few months back, around April, I made another Google Docs based script I called specifically that “Dry-AI”, and, well it basically pipelined prompts through documents like a charm, using the documents as a surface, like here but to generate content, not to write it onto a website. Hasta pronto.

This will be my alternative to becoming a Youtuber, I hope.

1, 2, … TESTING, … 3

A link → https://alandalus-experience.com

A Title - *from my publishing Google Doc, is for now not reverenced in my code, appears as regular text -

A Heading 1

→ Heading 2

→ Heading 3

→ Heading 4

→ Heading 5

→ a bold paragraph

→ a paragraph

An ordered list

An unordered list:

or…

An image:

*seems images are not supported, for now in my “live writing” Google Doc based system here, when they are you will see a QR code above that links to the index of this “hand built” traditional artisan HTML website.

.

• I use strange words nowadays, like “Abstraction”, or “generalisation”, my brain is half structured like a machine, half LLM, mood vs flight for survival-, deep focus based

Great!

This works, so I will pick it up from here as my journal and pre-marketing, “behind-the-scenes”, a little bit of critical thinking? But not in a bad way, critical I guess means vital, core, and that is a nicer way to frame it for me.

This is a dynamic web content editor solution based on Google Sheet Indexed of One Google Sheet per section and multiple Google Documents per article. It was designed mechanically in stages. As per my first publishing last week, it was slow by design, now it is as fast as it gets, blazing through my default Nextjs choice of architecture, otherwise all else still applies in this update below. Most importantly it was a fun, and very purposeful thought -> Just Do It -> design, conceive, get patterns I needed, tweak them, prompt and re-prompt very granularly per piece to get my desired result and exact pattern. And it is done. Working below

npx prisma db seed

Loaded Prisma config from prisma.config.ts.

Running seed command tsx prisma/seed.ts ...

The why is self-evident,

these sections and pages now generate from me composing and copying them to a Google Spreadsheet, so I am “re-cycling” the good engineering done on Google Dccs and Google Sheets, to leverage and save myself the time of programming such interfaces, and yet having this web application’s sections, ‘just done’ , like that, it saves me plenty of headaches further down along the line. I will probably be launching this as a downloadable tool, should I get down to adding a resources market place for this application - as scheduled over the next weeks.

How this was conceived and first built

This is a new and specifically slow by design interface. I just thought of it, built and tested this week - I won’t say in a couple of days -. A real time Google document viewer, deployed as an API, and then rendered through HTML and javascript to my own criteria and specifications. I like it. Love it 💛.

It is slow by design, also self published by design. To me that is trendy and also very practical. That’s why. I removed some friction I felt and fears of ‘the public’ element of sharing work, or words online, live. So this section now publishes documents that I put on a specific Google Sheet, from a sheet named Molino⺢Index This whole simple section, provides a method itself, and some extra motivation to enhance focus on my practice, and it removes my own “fear” in publishing, “impostor syndromes” and what know else.

Here the ‘unit’ is encapsulated into a Google Document, as an enabling surface, container or as a resource and digital asset in itself.

This is a door of open possibilities, a delivery, a resource, a tool or the product itself. These are public, or well, the first tab of each Google doc is published exclusively though this section, nowhere else as a working project document. I will publish them per week, per theme, per area, topic or specific goal.

Each document is the product of a weekly, monthly or seasonal professional practice, and is listed on the index of this public ‘practice’ section, as a world in itself.

From an atomic concept to instanced reiterative patterns. My focus is to echo the living spirit of the Alhambra, waving to the breath of Infinity through my daily practice. My final joy, I hope, may be in harvesting human stories and realities, through the rich tapestry of time.

Friendly notes, articles, topic or theme intros are usually in the first tab of each document.

However the documents aren’t necessarily free, though the first tab of each is. Articulate plans, further resources, guided-steps, blueprints, scripts, prompts, tools, techniques, resources, insights, concepts, values, standards, designs, patterns, themes, and custom project applications happen in tabs beyond the public reach, available on demand as a product or a service. Let me know if you want to dive deeper into any topic here.

Overall though this practice, this website and beyond, I’ll be covering ‘two channels’ in full depth and detail: my tourism brand, vs ‘back-office’ behind the scenes updates.

Each of these channels with their brands Molino⺢Practice, and Al-Andalus Experience’s monthly stories may then showcast different themes, department specifics, features, featured items, highlights, concept sessions, plans, routines, paths, synergies, parallelism thoughts and more.

Concept sessions, tools, practice routines, procedures, workflows, techniques, plans, routines, paths. Of course along with some hobby and creative live-work balance hacks - sometimes eccentricities which I cannot bear but share through the same stream, to the world 👾😂🫰🏼.

I'll be using this document or delivery ‘chapter’ to share some of my writing, adding a bit of motivation and an ounce of pressure for me to keep up a weekly writing routine.

This will be my alternative to becoming a Youtuber, I hope.

My writing here covers different areas and needs, from professional to marketing, brand stories, anything I'm actively working on and topics that more than frequently, tickle my thoughts.

The Practice,

Story and Experience

I used to travel for experiences and knowledge.

Until I realised the experience of knowledge

is the journey itself.

I work with knowledge, skill and craft as something lived, practiced, and transmitted — living, not stale.

My work brings together cultural journeys, applied concepts, and simple systems that help people understand place, work, and rhythm more clearly.

After more than twenty years across travel, landscapes, logistics, and systems, I now share what works — clearly, quietly, and at human scale.

My craft has unfolded over time, until designed as a stable practice.

Website Theme ‘Pattern’

This is a new start, it is an outlet of possibilities: layered availability, structured productivity, and above all, methodic closure.

Artist and educator Adam Williamson, a regular collaborator and friend, from a long way back, describes three layers of structure when he is teaching Islamic pattern:

“Within Islamic art, there are three fundamental aspects:

geometry, biomorphic or arabesque form, and calligraphy.”

geometry is the underlying grid,

vegetal form is living variation,

and calligraphy is meaning,

The three elements blend together, into potentially infinite expressions though space. Symbols for the expansion and contraction of the Universe, or Existence itself, which are preserved through time for us to delight upon through this unique form of art.

Beyond the harmonizing architecture of the Alhambra, I’ve organised and displayed my regular work areas into a rotating, creative and marketing weekly practice, inspired by these three levels of “abstraction”

The three elements provide a unified order to my professional practice, that helps to keep me sane, active and inspired, while opening a door for others to work and grow professionally with me.

I’m Z,

a native English speaker raised in Spain,

with 15+ years in cultural tourism and my brand Al-Andalus Experience. This journey gave me a keen ear for narrative language and bilingual writing with cultural depth.

My approach starts with writing: brand stories, thematic guides, and articles that form the base of campaigns. Then it extends into guidance on choosing and optimizing your communication channels: from newsletters and social to sales funnels. I use both self-built Google Sheets/Docs + Apps Script tools and no-code automation so your content flows in weekly automated routines.

My path blends cultural tourism and technology, from storytelling to automation in Google Apps Script, NestJS, and beyond.

Soy Z,

inglés nativo criado en España, con más de 15 años en turismo cultural y mi marca Al-Andalus Experience.

Esa trayectoria me dio un oído especial para el lenguaje narrativo y la escritura bilingüe con contexto cultural.

Mi enfoque empieza con escribir: historias de marca, guías temáticas y artículos que dan base a campañas. Y continúa con acompañamiento para elegir o afinar tus canales de comunicación: desde newsletters y redes hasta embudos de venta. Uso tanto herramientas propias en Google Sheets/Docs + Apps Script como soluciones no-code para que tu contenido fluya en rutinas semanales y automatizadas.

Mi camino une mercado, cultura y tecnología, desde storytelling hasta automatización en Google Apps Script, NestJS y más.

Opciones de Colaboración

Sesiones de diagnóstico, proyectos guiados o acompañamiento técnico para que tus contenidos y procesos se mantengan vivos y eficientes.

🧭 Sesión de Diagnóstico

1:1 para mapear tus flujos actuales y definir puntos críticos de comunicación y procesos.

⚙️ Proyecto Guiado

Desarrollo conjunto de un sistema: desde plantillas y dashboards hasta automatizaciones personalizadas.

🤝 Acompañamiento

Retainer mensual: mejoras, iteraciones y soporte a medida. Comunicación directa y continua.

✍️ Servicios Directos

Redacción, campañas, automatizaciones a medida. Lo que necesitas hoy, entregado sin rodeos.

🎯 Coaching & Formación

Sesiones semanales o mensuales para ti o tu equipo. Aprende a usar y mejorar tus propios flujos digitales.

This is a simple HTML website I built and wrote in just under three weeks now.

I will use it for publishing some live writing directly from Google Docs, and as a parallel Spreadsheet based booking form to offer my own services and availability, to the modern world.

It is part of a local marketing experiment with specific goals, to offer my own professional services and channels of interaction and communication, to locals in person in Granada, Spain, then to the world, online or by arranging a meeting or trip here.

Half of those three weeks was actually writing the content in the main sections. The hardest was to more or less organise and classify the possibilities of my own professional experience, and weekly routines, my practice to the world. And I didn’t go about it “the easy way” either. Each piece I built with full intent, while inspiring by the order found in, the decorations of the Alhambra themselves.

And here it is, as a public, though slightly ‘hidden’ domain, for poster, postcard, or manual sharing, one person and section at a time. There are now two Google Documents feeding this section, and I desisted on investing more time on getting images into this specific Document to HTML rendering solution, because my goal was to just be able to write and publish, then re-read from a public context, and if it passes, then move the content further to social media or ‘campaigns’.

The result → https://alandalus-experience.com/qr

I'll be using this section to share some of my writing, adding a bit of motivation and an ounce of pressure for me to keep up a weekly writing routine.

My writing here covers different areas and needs, from professional to marketing, brand stories, anything I'm actively working on and topics that more than frequently, tickle my thoughts.

This website I built and wrote in just under three weeks now.

It is part of a local marketing experiment with specific goals, to offer my own professional services and channels of interaction and communication, to locals in person in Granada, Spain, then to the world, online or by arranging a meeting or trip here.

Half of those three weeks was actually writing the content in the main sections. The hardest was to more or less organise and classify the possibilities of my own professional experience, and weekly routines, my practice to the world. And I didn’t go about it “the easy way” either. Each piece I built with full intent, while inspiring by the order found in, the decorations of the Alhambra themselves.

Underlying Structure

As artist and educator, a regular collaborator and friend from a long way back, Adam Williamson describes three layers of structure when teaching Islamic pattern:

“Within Islamic art, there are three fundamental aspects:

geometry, biomorphic or arabesque form, and calligraphy.”

He describes these not as decoration, but as a working hierarchy:

geometry as the underlying grid,

vegetal form as living variation,

and calligraphy as meaning carried through time.

So this is how I have organised and displayed my regular work areas here, beyond the architecture of the Alhambra, into a rotating, creative and marketing weekly practice. This practice helps to keep me sane, active and inspired, while opening a door for others to work and grow professionally with me.

Starting a steady 20/80 weekly practice.

One thing at a time, While I’ve been learning to code since around 2016 in anticipation to my daughter being born in 2017, , writing, sharing and helping professionals. I can consider my conding journey has reached a new stage and from around a year back I’ve been feeling that urge and preparing myself for it. It is a new stage. New times, new problems, new challenges and above all, a new streamlined set of small challenges to face daily, coming our way.

I’m not talking about global geo-politics here, or not yet anyway. I mean the simple type of small daily life-work challenges and keeping a sound mind in general, though the professional and personal realm.

Things are distinctively different than just a decade ago, and the redundancy here is unintended, it is simply real. I have long been feeling a real need to jump out of the wardrobe here and do more of what I’ve always loved, starting with writing and applying everything I’ve learned and my daily duties as a post modern third class back office saavi from the later margin and male manifestation of a prodigious generation-X - we thrived in the 90’s-.

What you may find here

I’m sure I’m going to get ‘haters’, ‘trolls’, and cynicism but am probably more worried about my closest relatives reading me than someone across the globe. That’s a character trait I must bear with for now. In the past year I self-assessed myself being towards the edge of a spectrum when it comes to gracefully changing the target of my focus and attention. I won’t name it, I don’t like carrying ‘tags’, but I am certainly not in the comfort zone when it comes to sharing or showing my work, what I do, what I think about or who I am, with other people, unless they show some interest and I can expect some “approval” in return. So this is quite a jump to even be writing here again, like it is social media day-1. I know that is not the case. Who reads things now anyway? Everybody is prompting, or passively thinking about all of the things, that -besides not fully grasping-, have automated to passively be doing our work. Hm. Did we loose control yet? No that is not what I started to write about here, but is all relevant to why and how I write.

Personality traits, origins, training

I’ll make it easier here by providing a bit more context, starting with a few of my own perceived personality traits, in a positive key. I am usually restless, slow thinker, very empathetic, self-motivated to high energies but not always clear ends. My first professional training was that of a 24/7 military-influenced family business, all round assistant. This took me all over Spain driving my late Spanish step-father from site to site, meeting to meeting, or on my own to do errands. I did an average of around 3000km a week, but mostly on the road, the waters were calm so long as the speed gauge was over 150km/h. I was privileged to get a first hand transmission of many things from my Spanish step-father, including his passion and vivid narrative, from “Don Quijote de La Mancha”, and a fond analysis of the mountain tops, castles, forts, major historical battle fields, and even insights into the geological formations from Granada to Mecca, from him.

My actual father, he parted back to the UK, when I was around age 4. I did meet him numerous times, and received what may seem to be little from him, highly symbolic for me, obviously. In fact I will be writing directly about him, my father (British) because during the aftermath of Covid and my entire work/business, life I received a hand typed manuscript from a fellow friend who has known him for all these yeards. He gave me “a manuscript”, it is a whole book, so I am transcribing it. Slowly but steadily, I may be sharing a bit of that here also: The Book on The (Arabic) Letters. I’m not sure what format I’ll be publishing this to, but will be sure to share some advances on it here for now.

So what else will I be writing and sharing here?

I made myself a spreadsheet to list my main writing areas and topics, it is quite extended → Shift+Pasting directly from the spreadsheet to here →

Who I am · Who am I? · What I do · Digital vs physical · Coaching · What I think about questions Writing · Journaling · Photography · Art · AI · Productivity Tourism · Trips · Cities · Experiences Local development · Cities History · Traditions · Culture · Cities Gardens · Plants Local food · What I think about questions

Lost in -bilibgual EN/ES- translation

As per language… It took me about two weeks to build this website from scratch, but mostly it was the writing that slowed me down. While I did use the’ old Gipetto -Gpt- for coding, it gave me some headaches to get all of the forms kind of decent and onto my spreadsheets, like I like them. From there I can plug them into my calendar and then I can get notifications for any bookings, or trip dates that I’m expecting or need to work on!

Where I was going before rambling… is that I will translate it, to Spanish, one section at a time, probably without ‘ai’, because I find it writes like an encyclopaedia, or maybe it’s just me, I find it dry.

Talking about that. With my full stack ‘developer’ hat on…

I have a weak-spot for Google AppsScript.

Amidst learning to code and finding my way of survival into this post-modern era, over the past decade, I have developed a whole galaxy of custom code and low friction office solutions far beyond the specifics of my own business needs. Into the lands of ‘generic solutions” as a full stack developer, I’m currently building my own full stack node js multi-purpose “boiler plate”, and using it across two or three different projects, each to be launched at their own pace and time.

I started around 2015, using the free Google Workspaces over a couple of specific Google Business accounts. I used Google Sheets as the repository, and AppsScript as my universal office automations stack. Particularly over the past year or two, I’ve made special place for a pattern or mind-set I developed myself, this being: “Google Docs as an interface”. I found I use them differently to convention.

The now “traditional” cloud based Application Programing Interfaces that revolutionised our lives and the global economy, supporting popular portals, lke Amazon, Youtube or Facebook, have successfully made “computing” more available for a whole generation of communication engineers and self-learned “coders”. PHP, MySQL, NodeJs, React, ORMs, backend, front-end, server-client, processes, data flows, layers, contexts, API interfaces, logic modularity, layering and isolation of “concerns” and now, also LLM, AI, available to “fill in logic gaps” on every step. We are undoubtedly living a new revolution. However, we also face the challenge of keeping up, to a faster pace, and not losing our own ancestral wisdom, human needs, nor running humanity in the process either. We certainly do need to find our place and learn to position ourselves, both professionally and regarding our own personal wellness, in these sophisticated, highly tech demanding new times.

Where I am going to is that for many daily small or large, repetitive business or professional needs, a simple Google Doc, has nothing to envy over an expensive and complex custom built web application, and you can also use sophisticated and dynamic web application patterns, using a google document as an interface.

Whether it is for taking a simple Minimum Viable Product fast to validate it on the real market, or making internal tools to speed up department procedures - repetitive processes, schedule marketing emails, generate leads, respond to form inputs, generate quotation documents, or payment confirmations - a simple and free Google Workspaces with the right AppsScript framework and patterns, can become a full blown business suite and automations engine today.

Scaling up to a dedicated full-stack web application from there is always easier than starting from a blank page. I’m using Nodejs technology and React based stacks mostly for my own Web Application projects, after exploring options from NestJS and TypeORM as a full backend (https://api.alandalus-experience.com). The line of classical backend/business logic server vs frontend/client interfaces, has specially blurred now with the new hybrid NextJS/NuxtJS environments (https://alanza-coop-v12-44131795481.europe-west1.run.app/). These are exciting new industry breakthroughs, that combined with us all using AI to help us in most of what we do, are also viable in production time and what I call, thought to production friction.

Right now, part of this new artisan HTML website that you are reading right now, is an experiment. Me building a new static HTML template - one I can use or extend to deliver web projects from- while exploring integration options from the right Google Workspace custom AppsScript interface endpoints. It is actually nearly just as good as my NextJS Saas style web application and the rich features I have there, for many business needs, just that it is faster and the environment is steady, ready to build without investing months or thousands, into a fully dedicated WebApplication.

for my daily business needs, tourism activities, trip planning, managing bookings and toolsI built for my tourism brand “Al-Andalus Experience” since 2016.

A few months back, around April, I made another Google Docs based script I called specifically that “Dry-AI”, and, well it basically pipelined prompts through documents like a charm, using the documents as a surface, like here but to generate content, not to write it onto a website. Hasta pronto.

This will be my alternative to becoming a Youtuber, I hope.

1, 2, … TESTING, … 3

A link → https://alandalus-experience.com

A Title - *from my publishing Google Doc, is for now not reverenced in my code, appears as regular text -

A Heading 1

→ Heading 2

→ Heading 3

→ Heading 4

→ Heading 5

→ a bold paragraph

→ a paragraph

An ordered list

An unordered list:

or…

An image:

*seems images are not supported, for now in my “live writing” Google Doc based system here, when they are you will see a QR code above that links to the index of this “hand built” traditional artisan HTML website.

.

• I use strange words nowadays, like “Abstraction”, or “generalisation”, my brain is half structured like a machine, half LLM, mood vs flight for survival-, deep focus based

Great!

This works, so I will pick it up from here as my journal and pre-marketing, “behind-the-scenes”, a little bit of critical thinking? But not in a bad way, critical I guess means vital, core, and that is a nicer way to frame it for me.

• I use strange words nowadays, like “Abstraction”, or “generalisation”, my brain is half structured like a machine, half LLM, mood vs flight for survival-, deep focus based

Great!

This works, so I will pick it up from here as my journal and pre-marketing, “behind-the-scenes”, a little bit of critical thinking? But not in a bad way, critical I guess means vital, core, and that is a nicer way to frame it for me.

I'll be using this section to share some of my writing, adding a bit of motivation and an ounce of pressure for me to keep up a weekly writing routine.

My writing here covers different areas and needs, from professional to marketing, brand stories, anything I'm actively working on and topics that more than frequently, tickle my thoughts.

This website I built and wrote in just under three weeks now.

It is part of a local marketing experiment with specific goals, to offer my own professional services and channels of interaction and communication, to locals in person in Granada, Spain, then to the world, online or by arranging a meeting or trip here.

Half of those three weeks was actually writing the content in the main sections. The hardest was to more or less organise and classify the possibilities of my own professional experience, and weekly routines, my practice to the world. And I didn’t go about it “the easy way” either. Each piece I built with full intent, while inspiring by the order found in, the decorations of the Alhambra themselves.

Underlying Structure

As artist and educator, a regular collaborator and friend from a long way back, Adam Williamson describes three layers of structure when teaching Islamic pattern:

“Within Islamic art, there are three fundamental aspects:

geometry, biomorphic or arabesque form, and calligraphy.”

He describes these not as decoration, but as a working hierarchy:

geometry as the underlying grid,

vegetal form as living variation,

and calligraphy as meaning carried through time.

So this is how I have organised and displayed my regular work areas here, beyond the architecture of the Alhambra, into a rotating, creative and marketing weekly practice. This practice helps to keep me sane, active and inspired, while opening a door for others to work and grow professionally with me.

Starting a steady 20/80 weekly practice.

One thing at a time, While I’ve been learning to code since around 2016 in anticipation to my daughter being born in 2017, , writing, sharing and helping professionals. I can consider my conding journey has reached a new stage and from around a year back I’ve been feeling that urge and preparing myself for it. It is a new stage. New times, new problems, new challenges and above all, a new streamlined set of small challenges to face daily, coming our way.

I’m not talking about global geo-politics here, or not yet anyway. I mean the simple type of small daily life-work challenges and keeping a sound mind in general, though the professional and personal realm.

Things are distinctively different than just a decade ago, and the redundancy here is unintended, it is simply real. I have long been feeling a real need to jump out of the wardrobe here and do more of what I’ve always loved, starting with writing and applying everything I’ve learned and my daily duties as a post modern third class back office saavi from the later margin and male manifestation of a prodigious generation-X - we thrived in the 90’s-.

What you may find here

I’m sure I’m going to get ‘haters’, ‘trolls’, and cynicism but am probably more worried about my closest relatives reading me than someone across the globe. That’s a character trait I must bear with for now. In the past year I self-assessed myself being towards the edge of a spectrum when it comes to gracefully changing the target of my focus and attention. I won’t name it, I don’t like carrying ‘tags’, but I am certainly not in the comfort zone when it comes to sharing or showing my work, what I do, what I think about or who I am, with other people, unless they show some interest and I can expect some “approval” in return. So this is quite a jump to even be writing here again, like it is social media day-1. I know that is not the case. Who reads things now anyway? Everybody is prompting, or passively thinking about all of the things, that -besides not fully grasping-, have automated to passively be doing our work. Hm. Did we loose control yet? No that is not what I started to write about here, but is all relevant to why and how I write.

Personality traits, origins, training

I’ll make it easier here by providing a bit more context, starting with a few of my own perceived personality traits, in a positive key. I am usually restless, slow thinker, very empathetic, self-motivated to high energies but not always clear ends. My first professional training was that of a 24/7 military-influenced family business, all round assistant. This took me all over Spain driving my late Spanish step-father from site to site, meeting to meeting, or on my own to do errands. I did an average of around 3000km a week, but mostly on the road, the waters were calm so long as the speed gauge was over 150km/h. I was privileged to get a first hand transmission of many things from my Spanish step-father, including his passion and vivid narrative, from “Don Quijote de La Mancha”, and a fond analysis of the mountain tops, castles, forts, major historical battle fields, and even insights into the geological formations from Granada to Mecca, from him.

My actual father, he parted back to the UK, when I was around age 4. I did meet him numerous times, and received what may seem to be little from him, highly symbolic for me, obviously. In fact I will be writing directly about him, my father (British) because during the aftermath of Covid and my entire work/business, life I received a hand typed manuscript from a fellow friend who has known him for all these yeards. He gave me “a manuscript”, it is a whole book, so I am transcribing it. Slowly but steadily, I may be sharing a bit of that here also: The Book on The (Arabic) Letters. I’m not sure what format I’ll be publishing this to, but will be sure to share some advances on it here for now.

So what else will I be writing and sharing here?

I made myself a spreadsheet to list my main writing areas and topics, it is quite extended → Shift+Pasting directly from the spreadsheet to here →

Who I am · Who am I? · What I do · Digital vs physical · Coaching · What I think about questions Writing · Journaling · Photography · Art · AI · Productivity Tourism · Trips · Cities · Experiences Local development · Cities History · Traditions · Culture · Cities Gardens · Plants Local food · What I think about questions

Lost in -bilibgual EN/ES- translation

As per language… It took me about two weeks to build this website from scratch, but mostly it was the writing that slowed me down. While I did use the’ old Gipetto -Gpt- for coding, it gave me some headaches to get all of the forms kind of decent and onto my spreadsheets, like I like them. From there I can plug them into my calendar and then I can get notifications for any bookings, or trip dates that I’m expecting or need to work on!

Where I was going before rambling… is that I will translate it, to Spanish, one section at a time, probably without ‘ai’, because I find it writes like an encyclopaedia, or maybe it’s just me, I find it dry.

Talking about that. With my full stack ‘developer’ hat on…

I have a weak-spot for Google AppsScript.

Amidst learning to code and finding my way of survival into this post-modern era, over the past decade, I have developed a whole galaxy of custom code and low friction office solutions far beyond the specifics of my own business needs. Into the lands of ‘generic solutions” as a full stack developer, I’m currently building my own full stack node js multi-purpose “boiler plate”, and using it across two or three different projects, each to be launched at their own pace and time.

I started around 2015, using the free Google Workspaces over a couple of specific Google Business accounts. I used Google Sheets as the repository, and AppsScript as my universal office automations stack. Particularly over the past year or two, I’ve made special place for a pattern or mind-set I developed myself, this being: “Google Docs as an interface”. I found I use them differently to convention.

The now “traditional” cloud based Application Programing Interfaces that revolutionised our lives and the global economy, supporting popular portals, lke Amazon, Youtube or Facebook, have successfully made “computing” more available for a whole generation of communication engineers and self-learned “coders”. PHP, MySQL, NodeJs, React, ORMs, backend, front-end, server-client, processes, data flows, layers, contexts, API interfaces, logic modularity, layering and isolation of “concerns” and now, also LLM, AI, available to “fill in logic gaps” on every step. We are undoubtedly living a new revolution. However, we also face the challenge of keeping up, to a faster pace, and not losing our own ancestral wisdom, human needs, nor running humanity in the process either. We certainly do need to find our place and learn to position ourselves, both professionally and regarding our own personal wellness, in these sophisticated, highly tech demanding new times.

Where I am going to is that for many daily small or large, repetitive business or professional needs, a simple Google Doc, has nothing to envy over an expensive and complex custom built web application, and you can also use sophisticated and dynamic web application patterns, using a google document as an interface.

Whether it is for taking a simple Minimum Viable Product fast to validate it on the real market, or making internal tools to speed up department procedures - repetitive processes, schedule marketing emails, generate leads, respond to form inputs, generate quotation documents, or payment confirmations - a simple and free Google Workspaces with the right AppsScript framework and patterns, can become a full blown business suite and automations engine today.

Scaling up to a dedicated full-stack web application from there is always easier than starting from a blank page. I’m using Nodejs technology and React based stacks mostly for my own Web Application projects, after exploring options from NestJS and TypeORM as a full backend (https://api.alandalus-experience.com). The line of classical backend/business logic server vs frontend/client interfaces, has specially blurred now with the new hybrid NextJS/NuxtJS environments (https://alanza-coop-v12-44131795481.europe-west1.run.app/). These are exciting new industry breakthroughs, that combined with us all using AI to help us in most of what we do, are also viable in production time and what I call, thought to production friction.

Right now, part of this new artisan HTML website that you are reading right now, is an experiment. Me building a new static HTML template - one I can use or extend to deliver web projects from- while exploring integration options from the right Google Workspace custom AppsScript interface endpoints. It is actually nearly just as good as my NextJS Saas style web application and the rich features I have there, for many business needs, just that it is faster and the environment is steady, ready to build without investing months or thousands, into a fully dedicated WebApplication.

for my daily business needs, tourism activities, trip planning, managing bookings and toolsI built for my tourism brand “Al-Andalus Experience” since 2016.

A few months back, around April, I made another Google Docs based script I called specifically that “Dry-AI”, and, well it basically pipelined prompts through documents like a charm, using the documents as a surface, like here but to generate content, not to write it onto a website. Hasta pronto.

This will be my alternative to becoming a Youtuber, I hope.

1, 2, … TESTING, … 3

A link → https://alandalus-experience.com

A Title - *from my publishing Google Doc, is for now not reverenced in my code, appears as regular text -

A Heading 1

→ Heading 2

→ Heading 3

→ Heading 4

→ Heading 5

→ a bold paragraph

→ a paragraph

An ordered list

An unordered list:

or…

An image:

*seems images are not supported, for now in my “live writing” Google Doc based system here, when they are you will see a QR code above that links to the index of this “hand built” traditional artisan HTML website.

.

Hi, I’m Z,

a native English speaker raised in Spain,

with 15+ years in cultural tourism and my brand Al-Andalus Experience.

This journey gave me a keen ear for narrative language and bilingual writing with cultural depth.

My approach starts with writing: brand stories, thematic guides, and articles that form the base of campaigns. Then it extends into guidance on choosing and optimizing your communication channels: from newsletters and social to sales funnels. I use both self-built Google Sheets/Docs + Apps Script tools and no-code automation so your content flows in weekly automated routines.

My path blends cultural tourism and technology, from storytelling to automation in Google Apps Script, NestJS, and beyond.

Soy Z,

inglés nativo criado en España, con más de 15 años en turismo cultural y mi marca Al-Andalus Experience.

Esa trayectoria me dio un oído especial para el lenguaje narrativo y la escritura bilingüe con contexto cultural.

Mi enfoque empieza con escribir: historias de marca, guías temáticas y artículos que dan base a campañas. Y continúa con acompañamiento para elegir o afinar tus canales de comunicación: desde newsletters y redes hasta embudos de venta. Uso tanto herramientas propias en Google Sheets/Docs + Apps Script como soluciones no-code para que tu contenido fluya en rutinas semanales y automatizadas.

Mi camino une mercado, cultura y tecnología, desde storytelling hasta automatización en Google Apps Script, NestJS y más.

Opciones de Colaboración

Sesiones de diagnóstico, proyectos guiados o acompañamiento técnico para que tus contenidos y procesos se mantengan vivos y eficientes.

🧭 Sesión de Diagnóstico

1:1 para mapear tus flujos actuales y definir puntos críticos de comunicación y procesos.

⚙️ Proyecto Guiado

Desarrollo conjunto de un sistema: desde plantillas y dashboards hasta automatizaciones personalizadas.

🤝 Acompañamiento

Retainer mensual: mejoras, iteraciones y soporte a medida. Comunicación directa y continua.

✍️ Servicios Directos

Redacción, campañas, automatizaciones a medida. Lo que necesitas hoy, entregado sin rodeos.

🎯 Coaching & Formación

Sesiones semanales o mensuales para ti o tu equipo. Aprende a usar y mejorar tus propios flujos digitales.

This is a simple HTML website I built and wrote in just under three weeks now.

coaching, sessiones , proyectos específicos .. nada mas la verdad, pero todo lo anterior lo puedo hacer en esas tres categorías, y tengo que poder vivir y cobrar de ello ya no minimamente, sino un salario digno ya un minimo intersalarial como estandard, ya debemos subir todos de mira y el mínimo vital o trabajar gratis pues no puede ser parte de niguna formula, cada cual debe pagar para valorar lo que se hace, no los clientes, sino cualquiera, o paga y bien por formarsele, o colabora y es parte integra de un canal central , osea entra en un acuerdo cooperativista que debemos sentar como base inicial de cualquier trabajo

[10/02/2026, 15:33:30] Alandalus Experience: el aspecto legal para poder operar, osea , legal contable etc, eso es la cooperativa, pero también financiero, osea ahora mismo llaga alguien con 100 mil euros, me los dan y se pierden, no sirven para nada, ni 200 mil tampoco, no sirven porque a mi me los quita Hacienda, 300 mil si servirían pero a lo que voy es que sin estructura legal y financiera, no podemos contar con ninguna seguridad asi que eso es un paso inprescindible que ya son casi 20 años de andar haciendo malabares y chapucillas en ese sentido

[10/02/2026, 15:45:06] Alandalus Experience: aqui con este enfoque se revela bastante una cosa, se puede vender formación, integración etc a locales y si se hace ha de valorarse como algo exclusivo y caro, es una opción.

→ la otra opción no es trabajar gratis como amigos, sino que firmen un acuerdo de cohesión y entren como socios de cooperativa , bolsa de trabajo y ya se abren mas puertas,

yo no veo más puertas que esas, y tampoco veo a los profesionales de aqui pagando grandes cantidades para formarse asi que la opcion cooperativa y bases sentadas , para ‘congelar’ objetivos comunes, estándares, acuerdos etc, y estar seguros de cobrarlos, pues es la más tangible, salvo que se invirtiera puro en marketing para profesionales de aqui y que nos pagasen por la formación y sistemas, aunque todavía no estamos alli, creo, más bien en lo otro , piña pero organizada, optimizada y en desarrollo potente

[10/02/2026, 15:02:55] Alandalus Experience: eso es solo una web para mi como profesional ofrece lo que yo ofrezco mas o menos, no es una web app para cooperativa, o una Saas, osea servicio como web app; solo un sistema de embalar y contener mi oferta a cualquiera, local, viajero, profesional, en las áreas de : oficina, programación , marketing, contenido, promoción , o proyectos diversos.

→ Luego encima de eso vienen los viajes, hasta alli es contenido, narrativa, conocimiento.