Seville

It was rather cloudy yesterday, which was great, as it was a very pleasant temperature all day.

We crossed the river; the banks are attractively landscaped, and are used for cycling, jogging, and walking. We visited the Torre del Oro. It is on a dodecahedron plan, and it’s part of the Arab defences of the city. There was another tower across the river, with a chain between them, to guard against attack by ship. Now it’s a small naval museum, and Phil really liked a lot of the ship models.

Torre del Oro

Then we went to the Alcazar, which is just amazing. The guide book was quite cool about it, but it is wonderful. It was founded  very early tenth century, but expanded several times. The truly gorgeous, I want to live here, bit was built by Pedro I of Castille between 1364 and 1366.

Pedro seems to have believed the Moors knew a thing or two about creating beautiful, comfortable palaces, and he was allied with the emir of Granada, who lent him craftsmen. The result is a wonderful mixture of Arab decorations with Gothic touches. It’s brilliant. Go at once.

See the Gothic motifs and the Arabic calligraphy.

Pedro's palace

Ceiling -isn't it heavenly?

Carving, with the hand of Fatima (at the bottom)

This is not to say that Pedro was a nice man;  he murdered an Arab guest for his jewels, one of which, an enormous uncut ruby, he gave to the Black Prince. It’s now in the Imperial State Crown.

Mind you, there’s a Patio of the Maidens, named for the tribute Christians had to pay the Moorish kings, of one hundred virgins.

There are also apartments built for Charles V, which, needless to say, are pompous and soulless, and there are apartments used by the present royal family when they visit Seville, but we didn’t visit those.

There’s the oldest painting to show the Americas, with the Virgin with Charles V, and native Americans under her cloak for protection. Poor devils, they didn’t know what they were in for.

There are very extensive, very beautiful and well maintained  gardens, from lovely little enclosed ones to an “English” garden, and there’s a maze, but you aren’t allowed in it. Perhaps they save it for the Royal family. Although Juan Carlos has been shown on TV abdicating, and he looks much older than our Queen. I can’t imagine him playing hide and seek in the maze. Whereas our queen can still walk backwards down steps in heels.

Patio garden, with acanthus

Patio garden with African lilies

Cistern, in the alcazar gardens

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Then we had a coffee and went off to the Cathedral. The drivers of carriages are touting for custom all around there, and it upset me, because I bet all those horses end their days in the bullring, with their vocal cords cut to stop them screaming.

So the cathedral is apparently officially the largest in the world, by volume. It’s not an attractive building, and inside it’s full of monstrosities, usually solid gold or silver monstrosities. I think that’s all I’m going to say about it. Phil said he thought that Martin Luther had a point, and of course he did, but unfortunately the Spanish Inquisition had a great many points, not to mention thumbscrews, racks, fires etc, and weren’t afraid to use them.

The tower was the minaret of the mosque. It’s Almohad style, like the Kutoubia in Marakech, built about 1190. There are no steps, just a series of quite gently inclined ramps, and to give the call to prayer, the imam rode a donkey to the top and back down. They’ve stuck a Christian bit on the top, but it’s still a brilliant building. So we did enjoy that bit of the cathedral, and the Patio de los Naranjos, which was the ablution court for the mosque, is also nice.

By this time we had had enough, so we had a very late lunch of roasted red pepper salad and mixed fried fish, and  then staggered back to do our washing in the little laundrette of the holiday flats, and have a rest..

Today we went first to the Museo de Bellas Artes, but it was closed until later in the morning. There was a square outside, with benches and flowers and a couple of baobab trees providing shade, but unfortunately it was heavily decorated with dog mess and stank of pee. 

So we walked on to see the Metropol Parasol in Plaza de la Encarnacion. Again, everything was closed – the market, the archaeological bits underneath, the walkway above – and it was all quite depressing. Obviously the area had got badly run down, hence the parasol, but we were rather unimpressed by it. It’s supposed to be the largest wooden building in the world, but it doesn’t look wooden. If you go to the Globe, or similar wooden structures, the untreated wood has a lovely silvery sheen and you can see the grain. This looked like MDF – you couldn’t see any grains or knots, and it looked painted. Also the metal fastenings holding it together are very intrusive. So we weren’t keen, although it is daring to put something like that in the old city.

Then we returned to the museum, which was open at last. We did rather whizz through it as it is stuffed with huge religious pictures, everyone looking agonised and suffering, often with gold plates on their heads.  There are a lot of Riberas, and you can actually see that they are better than the rest, but I still wouldn’t want them.

The museum is in an old convent, appropriated by the state in about 1840, and the building is worth seeing. There are a couple of lovely patios and a huge (for a convent) and spectacular chapel.

The other good thing was some paintings of about 1920, so-called Sevillian naturalism, of everyday life. It was quite stunning to see how backward Spain was then. There was a painting of the women working in the huge tobacco factory, as in “Carmen”, bringing their babies to work and stopping to feed them, and hand working in groups at tables. Long before this, John Player had mechanised the manufacture of tobacco products in Nottingham, and made himself a fortune.

The entrance to the tobacco factory 4,000 women worked here, searched on leaving in case
 they tried to take out tobacco. It has a moat and sentry boxes. Now it's
the technical university. 

We walked through the old city, with its narrow alleys, and along the modern, that is, turn of the twentieth century, boulevards, which are actually very attractive. Seville is flat and traffic, except for the tram, is banned from some of the boulevards, so there are lots of cyclists and skaters.

After a bit we saw hordes of people done up in their best, as if for a wedding, with twelve year old boys in suits and such. We heard a drum and realised there was a smallish detachment of the military, with band and rifles, marching along. Then we spotted the biers, or whatever they call them, with statues of saints carried shoulder high.

The road had been strewn with rosemary, and as it was trampled the smell was delicious. The great west doors of the cathedral were opened, and people were flooding out.

There was a tourist information office, so I went in and asked what was going on. The lady I spoke to had difficulty understanding what I wanted to know, but eventually we established that today is Corpus Christi. I think she didn’t understand that I might not know what day it is.

For our final fling we had a look at Parque Maria Luisa. There are buildings built for a Spanish- American great exhibition in 1929, and although they are definitely impressive, it’s difficult to believe they were built as late as 1929. There are tiled scenes depicting something about each big Spanish city, and the latest events shown took place in the war of independence against the French. Mostly they show the local Moors surrendering. So this is a commercial exhibition, and instead of Bilbao’s signature tile scene  showing steel works, it shows the Moors getting beaten.

Plaza de Espana, built for the Spanish American Fair

Seville has definitely a big city, capital of Andalucia, appearance, but we don’t like it as much as Cordoba or Granada. The religiosity is overwhelming. You’re never out of sight of a tiled picture of a suffering Madonna or sacred heart, or half starved saint. There are churches everywhere, every few yards it seems, and meeting houses for religious brotherhoods. And the other off putting factor is all the bullfighting posters, pictures, clothes and such. This may not be permanent – Corpus Christi is apparently the day of a specially important bull fight – but it isn’t pleasant.