Last Friday morning we left early in the morning for an IES trip
to Ronda and Sevilla.
Ronda is the largest of the “White Hill Towns” (I’m not sure
if that’s a real term, but it’s what Rick Steves calls them) with a population
of about 35,000. As you might imagine, it is whitewashed and it is in the
hills—built into the side and on top of a very high one, in fact. As Rick notes
in his guidebook, Ronda appears flat…until you walk to the edge and see there’s
a few hundred? thousand? sheer feet just under the lip of the street. (Later I
looked back at where we’d stopped for our first outlook point/photo opp, and my
stomach dropped: a whole section, right where I’d been standing, jutted out
over space, totally unsupported…I’m feeling sick just thinking about it.)
The dazzling views out over and across the hilly countryside
is one of Ronda’s draws; another, especially and foremost, is its “New” Bridge.
What happened to the old bridge? Back in the, what, 1500’s I think it was?
maybe earlier? they built a bridge to span the yawning chasm, and they built it
in a record nine months (the chasm is hugely wide, not to mention extremely
deep). Well, you get what you pay for, and forty years later the bridge
collapsed spectacularly, killing the hundred people who happened to be on it at
the time. The town learned its lesson and resolved to make an indestructible
bridge the second time around. This time they spent a very long time on it (the
figure of seventy years is in my head, but I’m not sure if that’s right) and
produced the New Bridge, which has stood there ever sense. The New Bridge is,
to my eyes, an architectural marvel. It is made of three immense stone arches
which go all the way down to the valley floor to span the river. I can’t
imagine how high it is (I couldn’t glimpse the bottom) and how much stone it
took to make. In the middle of the middle column there is a little window and a
little balcony, just wide enough to stand out on (again, the thought of
standing there is making me nauseated), and apparently that window belongs to a
room that they used to use for a jail. There couldn’t be a better place for a
prison: I don’t know about the security on the other end, on the entrance, but
you’re certainly not getting away out the window…
I learned all these factoids from our tour guide, Bea. They
divided us into groups, most of which were led by art history professors. I
don’t know what Bea’s background was, but she had just passed her exams to be
an official tour guide and we were her very first tour. She did an excellent
job!
Ronda is also notable for its bullfighting ring, which is
one of the oldest in the country and which was the first to introduce the idea
of bullfighting on foot (prior to that it was done on horseback)—we didn’t go
inside the ring, but ah well—and its Moorish baths: Ronda wasn’t reconquista’d
by the Spanish until 1485.
We only spent a few, very sunny and comfortable hours in
Ronda before packing into the bus again to continue on to Sevilla. Sevilla,
with a population of over 700,000 (that’s twice Granada) is the largest city in
Southern Spain and the capital of Andalucía. Of course I’ve always heard of
Sevilla as a destination, but I had no idea what to expect.
Sevilla definitely felt like a big city to me, much larger
than Granada. A river cuts through the city that reminded me of the Columbia
river in Portland at its narrower parts, replete with people out practicing all
sorts of water sports: tons of rowing shells, paddleboards, kayaks and
dragonboats. Everything felt very colorful, with most all the buildings painted
some color other than white (usually yellow, red-orange, pink, and all shades
in between). There were lots of palms trees and, obviously, just as many
churches.
An amazing fact: how many orange trees do you think there
are in Sevilla? I can tell you that they are everywhere (and all of them are absolutely dripping with fruit),
but the actual statistic is astounding: more than 35,000 have been officially
documented! Although they’re mouthwatering to behold, they are cultivated for
decoration only, and the fruit itself is apparently practically inedible it’s
so bitter. The English, however, load up these oranges with sugar and make a
marmalade, which they (fittingly) call “Sevilla orange.”
[A linguistic sidenote: many words for fruits in Spanish are
feminine, such as la naranja (orange), la manzana (apple), la almendra
(almond), and la oliva (olive); but when you’re speaking about the trees that
these fruits come from, you swap the gender—el naranjo, el manzano, and so on. I
assume this is because ‘fruta’ (fruit) is a feminine word and ‘árbol’ (tree) is
masculine. (I’m assuming this because in Slovak all the words for colors are
feminine because the word ‘color’ in Slovak is feminine—all individual colors
are, in a sense, adjectives modifying the word ‘color,’ and the adjectives’
gender must match that of the noun they’re modifying.)]
We arrived in Sevilla in the late afternoon, spent the
night, and left the next day in the afternoon. As far as actual allotted
daylight hours for touring the city, it felt like there weren’t very many, but
maybe just enough for a quick dip. I saw a lot,
I imagine I saw all the big sights, but I definitely wouldn’t have minded
another day or two to soak in the city some more. All-in-all a very fun,
must-see destination.
Here are the highlights from my whirlwind tour:
1) The Cathedral.
The cathedral in Sevilla is—get this—the third largest church in the world,
after the Vatican and some basilica in Brazil. It’s also the world’s largest
Gothic cathedral. From the outside it looks sprawling, all made of the same
tan-colored stone walls capped with ornamental spindles and flourishes. Inside,
yes, it is immense. Wikipedia tells me the ceiling gets up to 138 ft. in height
(I’m terrible at estimating these things, but that sounds about right). I kept
looking at the tree-trunk-sized supporting columns wondering how many people it
would take, holding hands, to encircle them. There were many, many naves and
side-chapels and altars (including one made entirely of silver—which was
amazing, even though apparently it used to be twice as big but half of it was
melted down to finance some war along the way) and treasure rooms. The height of the ceilings was
definitely the most impressive aspect of the cathedral for me.
I can’t say the cathedral comes close to ranking in my list
of favorite, or prettiest, churches I’ve seen. Inside the stone was very gray
and dark. I wasn’t sure where to focus my attention; sprawling is the best word for it. There were few stained glass
windows, and they were very high up, much too high up to even see what they
depicted. (I learned recently that this is Gothic style, in keeping with the
belief at that time that a dark sanctuary better helped people direct their
focus to God.) But unquestionably an impressive building overall.
Part of the cathedral complex is La Giralda, aka the Tower
of Giralda, which, judging from the stock of the souvenir shops, is an icon of
the city. It was originally built as the grand mosque’s minaret under Moorish
rule, and has that Moorish feel to it, but after the Reconquista in 1248 in
Sevilla it was converted into the church’s belltower. (The tower is 312 feet
high. I wonder how much they had to add on to the original minaret!) We climbed
up to the top—interestingly, there were no stairs, only a series of ramps, and
we saw many a stroller make it to the top—and had a tremendous view of the
whole city. The rain and wind, which had dogged us ever since we got to
Sevilla, were lashing violently and it was quite wild up there. A little later,
down in the main plaza, the rain really broke and it was a downpour for the
ages. There was nowhere to flee to. The city block was an unbroken stretch of
people pressed under the foot of awning jutting out from the storefronts, but
it wasn’t nearly enough. On the bright side, we found somewhere to eat, had a
lovely lunch*, and when we emerged the sun was out again. Happily, my shoes,
which I’d been meaning to wash ever since they got muddy on our Alpujarra hike,
had gotten thoroughly soaked and were now squeaky clean.
*On that note, we had to fend for ourselves for dinner the
first day and lunch the day after, and I, quite by accident, wound up having
delicious tortellini with Fanta and Italian breadsticks (the real stuff: hard,
salty sticks that come in packages) both times. There’s nothing I love more.
2) The Alcázar. Originally
a Moorish fort, the Alcázar was converted sometime along the way into a lavish,
immense palace for los Reyes Católicos and their descendants. Every successive
monarch contributed some add-on to the complex and it just grew larger and
larger. The Alcázar was definitely the most beautiful thing I saw in Sevilla by
a long shot. Every last inch of it was absolutely stunning. Every room was
lavishly decorated in intricately-patterned, colorful Moorish tiles and
detailed, engraved marble designs, or gilded, or painted; there were countless
inner courtyards with fountains and plazas and gardens and baths; and domes and
delicate archways abounded. There was Arabic aplenty as well, woven around
doorsills or cut into wood window shutters. That made me wonder: maybe los
Reyes Católicos were pragmatic, and if it was pretty enough, they kept it, and
never mind if it was a reminder of their defeated foes? All in all, a sumptuous
feast for the eyes, and although opulent, incredibly tasteful as well: it was
never ‘too much’ or over-the-top, even though no possible expense had been
spared or stretch of wall left bare.
3) The Plaza de
España. Something that was a bit over-the-top,
but marvelous nonetheless, was the Plaza de España. I don’t know how to
describe its size. Of all the things I’ve described so far, it felt the largest
of all of them, and certainly by design. It’s a ‘big’ (for lack of a better
term) plaza with a ‘big’ building at one end. The building, which feels like
several buildings (a central building with two wings that lead to two more
buildings, and then the continued wings that culminate in towers), is all one,
a giant (monstrous?) stretch, too big to take in in one view, bowed into a kind
of parabolic effect. To make things more outrageous, there is a moat in front
of the building—but only in front of the building; it doesn’t wrap all the way
around—with gondolas (and gondoliers) and other boats in it; several bridges
traverse the water to get to the building itself. There are also scores of
horse-drawn carriages for tourists. The Plaza de España is shockingly young: it
was built in 1928 for an exposition. As far as I could tell, tourists are only
allowed in a very small part of it, that of the main building, but really it
all feels like a shell anyway: it’s the show, the presentation of the façade,
that counts, not whatever’s inside (and what could be inside? it’s completely impractical). For all its
ostentatiousness it was still quite fun to see.
4) Flamenco. Andalucía,
as the cultural heart of old Spain, is known for its flamenco tradition. The
Andalucíans (or at least the Granadinos) themselves tell you this is an
overblown stereotype, but the fact remains that the dance originated here, and
is still wildly popular (at least with the tourists). I’ve kept my eye out for
cheap flamenco shows in Granada, but they’ve all seemed overpriced to me thus
far. I was delighted, then, when IES took us to a flamenco show in Sevilla! It
started at 11 PM, a perfectly respectable hour by Spanish time. It lasted about
forty-five minutes, and yes, it completely lived up to the hype. I’d seen
flamenco on TV and in movies before, but there’s always an added magic to
seeing a live performance. There was a guitarist and a singer, who crooned in a
strange, haunting voice much like a muezzin’s call to prayer (it kept
surprising me when I would tune in to, and understand, the song lyrics: they
were in Spanish, but the overall tone sounded so Arabic to me). There were two
dancers, a female and a male one, who performed independently of each other.
The female dancer, who was first, was what I was accustomed to seeing: the
furious stomping and clicking of the shoes, the undulating hands and snapping
fingers. The male dancer surprised me, simply because I’d never seen a male
flamenco dancer before. His moves were very much the same as the woman’s, but
it was different to watch because you could see what his legs were doing (as
opposed to not being able to see the female dancer’s legs under her long
skirt). They both did an exceptional job. It was breathtaking. I’ve never read
Lorca, but I know he was a big flamenco aficionado, so now I’m hoping we’ll
read some of his flamenco-based poetry in my class on him.
Well, I think I’ve summed up the major events of the weekend
(skimming out the minor ones in the interest of my time and yours). It’s so
great that IES has so many amazing trips planned for us throughout the
semester. I think Córdoba’s up next!
Love,
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