The Colours of Seville

Seville is all about colours. Colourful doorways, colourful facades, colourful tiles, colourful flowers, colourful everything. Tiles can be found everywhere on signs, walls, benches, store fronts, etc. Buildings are accented with vibrant colours. The courtyards are so alluring that you feel you have arrived at the coziest place to rest... and then you see another one. The incredible heat of summer in Seville is what made courtyards a desirable escape and they are filled with a wide variety of plants to keep them cool. Seville has countless charming tiny shops along narrow cobblestone streets especially in the Jewish Quarter where it is fun to just give up and lose your way. Most of the streets have more than one name and endless tight corners so wandering aimlessly is not a problem, it is a goal.

We found ourselves doing a lot of drying out in Seville. This incredibly dry city decided to have its annual rainfall while we were there. It meant we had to do some adjusting but with an umbrella in hand we headed out to do the best we could. Fortunately the sun peeked out just enough so we could see and enjoy the incredible beauty of this city which was at one time in the 1500s the busiest and most prosperous place in the world due to all the New World gold they 'found'. A lot of that gold went into building the largest Gothic cathedral in the world (their motto was 'We'll build a church so big they'll think we were mad' which doesn't seem to be quite the right reason for building a church). That gold is gone since it was taken out (plundered) during the financial hardships that followed and replaced with gold painted wood (gives new meaning to 'all that glitters isn't gold'). By the way, this building is smaller than St. Peter's and St. Paul's but they are considered basilicas or aren't gothic so everybody gets to claim they are biggest in some category. The whole thing, however, has no real beauty because it has no central design other than 'bigness'. They just kept adding on and on in whatever style they wanted so it is a total hodgepodge architecturally.

The incredible irony of Seville is that the Christians who threw out the Muslims and built these gargantuan buildings to show their superiority never were able to surpass the beauty of the Moorish architecture. The Giralda Tower oversees the city and is a minaret that was 'converted' into a Christian bell tower (have fun with that one theologically). A fascinating fact about Spain is that the most tolerant times were during the Muslim era when everybody, whether Christian, Jew, or Muslim, were allowed to live in peace. It was when the Christians finished recapturing Spain in 1492 that intolerance became the rule of the land (ever heard of the Inquisition?). In fact one of the main reasons there is a 'jamon' or ham shop on every corner is that 'infidels' could prove they were actually Christian by eating ham and the tradition stayed. The more modern Plaza de Espana shows off in beautiful tiles the different regions of Spain and is now a popular park. One of the interesting observations we made is that it is probably only in this collection of tile murals that you see a united Spain. Many regions have independence on their minds (Quebec is not unique in this). 

Walking down narrow streets has become second nature to us and that means always being ready to jump out of the way of traffic that can come out of nowhere. Although these streets were designed to always be in the shade so people in Seville could survive the hot summer, they didn't help us as far as the rain. Whenever it rained, we hopped into a neighbourhood establishment. While we were on our free walking tour the rain drove us into this bar where we discovered that in our group we had a fellow Manitoban (the Jets shirt gave him away) named Steven whose Dad worked at the TRC in Winkler for many years. We just can't seem to shake those Canadians! Despite the rain (or because of it), we definitely could have used a few more days to soak up all that Seville has to offer.