Impressions of Seville

Impressions of Seville

The 100-metre tall bell tower of Seville’s cathedral (La Giralda) has a unique means of ascent. Instead of the usual medieval staircase, winding upwards or downwards narrowly and unevenly and endlessly, there is a brick ramp. It goes up (and down) at angles, and is much to be preferred to stairs.

The Moors designed it when the bell tower was the minaret for a mosque, and it enabled the cleric to ride up on a donkey, several times a day, to deliver the call to prayer.

However, there are drawbacks. One is an encounter with a primary school outing. A big group of very young children had decided that the slope down was made for bunny-hopping; and down they came at uncontrollable speed, in defiance of the desperate shouts of their teachers.

Narrowly avoiding being maimed by Year 2, one reaches the top platform, where hang many prodigious bells, luckily not employed to ring the hours (that is the task of one set a little higher in the tower).

As is often the case with tall monuments in old city centres, the view of them is much better than the view from them. Most of what one sees from La Giralda’s platform is expanses of boring modern suburbs.

(One guidebook comments that the inhabitants of Seville seldom make the ascent, except for the purpose of suicide.)

The cathedral itself is vast and gloomily Gothic. I suppose that most Spanish churches of a certain period have grilles protecting side chapels, choir and high altar. In Seville I was struck, for the first time, by how this practice creates an impression of prison. But it is an inside-out sort of jail. The enclosed spaces are full of ecclesiastical riches, or (to be honest) ecclesiastical tat. We, the observers are shut out in the Gothic twilight. This especially so at the High Altar – a dazzling, vast and ghastly display of gold, fronted by a huge grille of metal. One is impelled to think of the “decoration” in Trump Tower, and the threatened Wall. Only in this case it is Catholic pomp, wealth and power, and the traditional exclusion of the laity from the space belonging to the mysteries of the Eucharist.

I now understand that the religious art of the Counter Reformation (from about the mid C16) emphasized literal narrative themes, aiding true belief. Hence the “realism”, often taken to extremes of sentimentality or gruesomeness, exhibited by the paintings and, especially, the statues after that time. It is no wonder that many statues have become the focus of their own cults, little differing from the veneration of Hindu images, or the devotion shown to the alarmingly huge Buddhas of Thailand or Burma.

When we were in Seville, there was a small but intense procession to carry (as we later learned) an image of Christ from the Cathedral back to its proper church. In a local shop, upon our enquiry, it was explained to us that a “Cristo” was leaving the Cathedral to return to “su casa”. For a moment we thought that a real person was being spoken of; that “Cristo” was some sort of title for a degree of the clergy. After being taken for pagans needing a lesson in basic Christianity, the penny dropped: we had been misled by Spanish Catholic anthropomorphism.

The Cathedral and its Tower are great to look at, but impressions from a tour of them are ambiguous. The reverse is true of the Alcazar. One cannot really look at it from the outside (it is somewhat hidden by surrounding buildings), but it is an astonishing place to go into, and through, indeed, to its wonderful gardens.

The Alcazar is an intricate royal palace of richly decorated rooms and delightful courtyards. It has evolved over the centuries, since Moorish times, when Emirs or Caliphs established the pattern for the building. But it was a succession of Christian kings, after the Reconquista, that fashioned most of the buildings we see today – however (and confusingly to the visitor) in a distinctly Moorish style (the style known as “Mudejar”), with complex geometric patterns and Moorish doors and windows.

The Moorish practice of incorporating religious inscriptions was also continued, so much so that the rooms of the Christian kings display verses praising Allah.

Some parts of the Alcazar (notably the main façade) deliberately combine Mudejar and medieval Christian styles – a pleasing but disconcerting effect, which constantly prompts the question: “Who built, and when, that at which I am looking?” (The audioguide is generally pretty vague.)

Seville has a modern tramline, running through the busiest thoroughfares. The trams are rather cartoonish, with high prow, suggesting (when one wanders across the track and notices a tram approaching) a remorseless machine bearing down on a helpless victim tied to the track (except the track is flush with the road, with no place for ties).

As in other Andalucian cities (Malaga, Granada, Cordoba, Cadiz), I’ve been stuck by the fact that the local people one necessarily has to do with as a visitor – hotel staff, waiters, attendants and transport people are mostly free of the slick cynicism one often encounters in other tourist centres (Paris and Venice, for example; but no doubt London is up there). It’s one of the many plusses of travelling in Spain – the friendliness and helpfulness that is always offered.

March 2017