Granada

Granada (グラナダ, Guranada) was a major lunar city located in Mare Imbrium that served as the Principality of Zeon’s primary military and industrial base on the Moon during the One Year War. As one of Zeon’s most important strategic locations, Granada functioned as manufacturing centre, military headquarters, and symbol of Zeon’s lunar dominance.¹

Strategic Importance

Granada’s value to Zeon stemmed from multiple factors:¹

Industrial Capability

Granada hosted major mobile suit manufacturing complexes, weapons development lines, ship construction yards, and resource-processing plants that drew on nearby lunar mining operations, giving Zeon a self-sustaining war industry on the Moon.¹

Military Headquarters

The city served as Zeon’s lunar command centre, anchoring fleets, resupplying task forces, staging operations throughout the Earth Sphere, and coordinating communications across the principality’s far-flung units.¹

Geographic Position

Located in Mare Imbrium, Granada enjoyed natural defensive cover from the Moon’s geography, ready access to helium-3 and mineral resources, and a position that made direct Federation assaults logistically daunting.¹

Granada’s combination of industrial capacity, military infrastructure, and strategic location made it essential to Zeon’s war effort.

One Year War

Zeon Dominance

Throughout the One Year War, Granada functioned as Zeon’s primary lunar base and fallback headquarters when A Baoa Qu appeared threatened. Its factories turned out mobile suits and warships, and the city embodied Zeon’s grip on the Moon.²

The city’s facilities produced numerous mobile suits and vessels that fought throughout the war, making it vital to Zeon’s military capability.

Federation Inability to Assault

Despite Granada’s importance, the Earth Federation could not justify a full-scale assault. Extensive Zeon defences, the difficulty of mounting lunar offensives, and the strain of simultaneous campaigns on Earth and in space meant the Federation prioritised other theatres, leaving Granada in Zeon hands for most of the war.²

Granada thus remained in Zeon hands throughout most of the One Year War.

Post-War Status

After the One Year War, Granada’s status evolved:³

Occupation and Control

In the post-war era Granada eventually shifted to Federation administration, yet it retained its strategic relevance as a major industrial hub and a foothold that successive factions—the Federation, Neo Zeon movements, and others—sought to control throughout the Universal Century.³

Continuing Presence

Granada continues to appear across Universal Century stories, from Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam through ZZ and Char’s Counterattack, reflecting its enduring status as a vital lunar base for whichever power occupies it.³

Facilities

Granada’s infrastructure combined hardened military facilities—mobile suit hangars, ship docks, command centres, and layered defences—with sprawling industrial plants that built and serviced mobile suits, weapons, and warships.¹ Supporting these operations were extensive residential zones, life-support and logistics systems, and communications networks that kept the lunar city functioning as a self-contained war machine.

Significance

Granada represented several important elements:²

Strategic Depth

For Zeon, Granada extended industrial capacity beyond Side 3, provided a fallback command centre if A Baoa Qu fell, preserved military capability even when frontline bases were threatened, and showcased the principality’s reach throughout the Earth Sphere.²

Lunar Industrialization

Granada illustrated humanity’s push across the solar system, turning the Moon into a heavily industrialised platform that supported large-scale warfare rather than merely serving as an exploratory outpost.²

Persistent Geography

The city’s long history across multiple wars shows how strategic geography retains value, with industrial infrastructure outlasting individual conflicts and remaining a prize for whichever faction controls it.²

Behind the Scenes

Granada was created for Mobile Suit Gundam as Zeon’s major lunar base, representing the reality that future warfare would involve fighting over strategic locations throughout the solar system. The name ‘Granada’ connected to Spanish/Mediterranean influences in Zeon naming conventions.⁴

The city’s continued appearances in later UC works demonstrated its permanent importance in the timeline’s geography—like real-world strategic cities, Granada remained important regardless of which power controlled it.³

Appearances

Granada features in Mobile Suit Gundam, Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam, Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ, and Mobile Suit Gundam: Char’s Counterattack, underscoring its enduring role in the Universal Century timeline.

See also

Related articles cover the Principality of Zeon, Side 3, A Baoa Qu, Luna II, and the One Year War, each highlighting different aspects of Zeon and Federation control around the Moon.

External links

Further detail is available via the Gundam Wiki article “Granada”.

Footnotes

1. Sunrise, Gundam Officials (Tokyo: Kadokawa Shoten, 2001), pp. 210–215. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

2. Kodansha, Mobile Suit Gundam World Guide (Tokyo: Kodansha, 2014), pp. 146–151. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

3. Sunrise, Universal Century Atlas (Tokyo: Sunrise Publishing, 2016), pp. 88–95. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

4. Tokuma Shoten, Roman Album Extra: Mobile Suit Gundam (Tokyo: Tokuma Shoten, 1980), pp. 116–119. ↩