Zafra to Seville, Thursday December 4th

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Keith’s plan to go to the bus station early had not taken into account that we were locked in. We had to wake up the hostel manager, but he was cheerful about it all and made our breakfast as soon as Keith came back. He told us that there are lots of customers in warmer months, and that none of them speak Spanish. Lots of them are rich Greeks, which seemed odd since this was an excellent hostel but at the very cheap end of the spectrum. Perhaps the rich Greeks were taking pilgrimage seriously and trying a little poverty for a while. Obviously their designer cloaks, gold cockle shells and superior sandals had given them away.

The bus to Seville had three passengers on it. From our positions high up we could look over a wall into a yard on the city side of the main road around Zafra. There was a traditional farm house, hens, vegetables and olive trees, and a donkey standing high up on a small hill in the middle. They must have held out when developers, at least a century ago, approached land owners. We passed through an industrial suburb before hitting a round of villages and farms. A ‘big bull’ metal silhouette on a hill reminded us that we were about to arrive in Seville, the home of bull fighting.

Once out of the bus and onto the streets, the orange trees lining the roads and in the squares, and the horses and carriages brought back memories of another time we had been in Seville thirty years ago.

Even my backpack seemed light as I bounced along, excited by the familiar tiled details on buildings and the narrow streets and lanes. We found our pension (cheap family run hotel) down a maze. The list of street names Keith had written down for us to turn at was incredibly long for the short distance that we had to walk. The last stretch before the Square of Crosses had a very narrow street that reduced by half to much less than a vehicle’s width, before it opened up for the square. The tiny square had three elaborate wrought iron crosses in the centre, and a lane leading off it to our pension.

A family runs the lodgings, and have a curfew at 1.30 a.m. that is never going to bother us. We dumped our belongings and set off to explore. We headed back to the cathedral and, although we felt comfortable and familiar here, neither of us could remember the details of what we had visited last time.

One of the entrances to the Seville Cathedral - one of the world's largest - with remarkable relief sculptures above the door

La Giralda is now the bell tower of the cathedral, but most of it was once the minaret of the mosque that stood on the site.

Later we emailed our two companions on that long ago trip, and they were equally vague. The four of us and families will have to have a real vintage slide night when we return to Australia. We called at the tourist office where we received a map of the 82 main monuments and places of interest that we could visit, and some suggestions for the region of Seville as well, if we had time. I asked about the damage to the faces of the men on the statue with the Virgin above them that we had seen in the square just outside the tourist office. The man said that it was to do with the defence of the Virgin, of her immaculate conception, something that was very difficult for a catholic to explain to protestants. He did say that Seville played a very important part in the ’defence of the Virgin’. I hate it when people assume that you can’t understand or do something, and wished that he would try to explain it to me, even if I looked like a protestant.

After a quick stroll around the square, we found the entrance of the Alcázar, our starting point for our afternoon. We were basically following the Lonely Planet walking tour of central Seville, which just gives you an overview of where things are, but we managed to lose ourselves in the labyrinth of streets after the first few instructions. It didn’t matter since we were finding views through doorways into tiled courtyards, and little squares with statues in them and churches tucked in everywhere. We would be off the tour, and back on it around a corner. The centre of Seville is densely packed and distances between crossroads are short.

The colours of Seville are intense – a rich yellow ochre, crushed strawberry red and brightest green against white. There were tiles everywhere, as benches, as edges of steps or whole steps, decoratively on buildings, and in large tile ‘posters’ of both religious and secular subjects. Many of the tiles had blue in their pattens, a colour not often used on the buildings, and so created a contrast that stood out.

Above: This building has tiles on the underneath side of the balconies.

Below; Even the parking area for motor scooters is decorated with tiles.

The town hall is so stately that we wondered why a temporary group of shops had been allowed to set up in front of it, only to discover that it was the back. The front was much more decorated and grand, although our attention was taken from it by the exhibition of Rodin sculptures, including the famous ‘Thinker’ on the path. The sculptures were so strong and showed people in moments of anguish and interesting poses, moving away from naturalism in giving them some larger features such as feet and hands. A strange aspect was that none of the nudes had penises; not broken off, just not included at all.

Only one of the men in this photo is actually thinking.

The Square of San Salvador had the other part of the ‘Sculpture in the Streets’ exhibition – sculptures by Salvador Dali. They were wild and intense and very powerful too.

What a treat for the people of Seville and lucky visitors like us.

The San Salvador square was surrounded by drinkers, most attached to ever expanding bars and restaurants, but some, scruffy and accompanied by dogs, were drinking from cardboard casks and sitting along the steps in front of the church of San Salvador.

They looked like poor people in medieval paintings and our guess was that maybe they were homeless, given the packages of cardboard and blankets further along the steps. A man and his friends talked on, laughing and drinking while a black dog attempted to hump his back. Another man, dressed in blue and white and wearing a cap, seemed to be trying to hold the floor, proclaiming and walking up and down, while the others ignored him. His aggression stood out against the passivity and calm of the others. He approached us while we looked at each sculpture, talking at us from a little distance, as he had been with the others on the steps. We ignored him, which made him angry, and he came right over and told us that we were not educated. I said that we didn’t understand Spanish and we walked away, but Keith felt quite harassed, because he could understand some of what was being said and didn’t like being talked at aggressively. We left the square feeling uncomfortable.

We had a wonderful time on our little orientation tour, with no pressure to make opening times and plenty of time to look at everything. We had trouble finding a supermarket, but we didn’t mind because it gave us a chance to look at the shops – an amazing number of very stylish clothing boutiques for both men and women, lots of tourist souvenir outlets and many flamenco dancing dress tailors. The dresses were exquisite and not designed for the tourist market. They catered for all sizes, with tiny flamenco dresses for three year olds being just as serious a matter as the gorgeous designs for women. The spotted numbers are only to be found in tourist shops, with the other ones being in all kinds of glorious fabrics and designs. The main thing is that the torso to below the bottom is incredibly tight and the skirt below the hips or knees is elaborately ruffled or flared.

On our way back, through the Salvador Square, we saw that the council was at work pressure hosing the steps. There was no sign of the group who had been there earlier and we wondered if making the steps wet and cold was a way to move people on. Later we were to see that the council goes around cleaning all the streets and squares with water and brooms, and so this was probably just the routine turn of this square. For ages we thought that it must always be raining when we were inside, since the stones were often wet, but we eventually saw the little cleaning vehicles in action. Given the dog poo and horse droppings everywhere, it is a good thing that they are on the job.

That night, we discussed my school situation yet again, and finally I dropped off to sleep. At three a.m. I woke, worried about the implications of some wording in the letter I had received. Eventually I got up and emailed my friend in Australia, who was just having lunch. She was a great help and we had a little email conversation going. Poor Keith had to be woken for some technical assistance, and stayed awake for moral support. In the end I decided to ring the Union on Australia’s Monday morning and have a chat. We fell asleep around five am. What I need is a good book, powerful and interesting enough to take my mind off things.

Riding in the bus through central Spain we saw many wind farms. In the south we have seen a number of solar farms, with hundreds of photo voltaic cells. Some places have mirrors reflecting light to a tower which heats water to generate electricity. Spain is a world leader in solar technologies and aims to achieve 10% of its power from solar by 2010.

This shop does not sell small, furry animals, but is simply a hardware store (ferro: iron: ironmonger)