A FIRST STEP BACK

SPANISH INTERLUDE

Among the lesser-known facts regarding bullfighting, at least as I saw it practiced in Seville, is that the number in largest type on the ticket, in my case 20, is absolutely meaningless. I circumnavigated the Plaza de Toros there twice, once in each direction, and found no sign of it, nor did I when once inside the arena itself. The section, row, and seat numbers were of obvious use, however, although printed in much smaller type.

Of far greater importance were the arena signs sombra, sol, and grada. The first two are straightforward, meaning shade and sun, respectively. I was relieved to learn that my seat would be in the shade; the box office attendant simply shook his head when my best “buenos dias” was followed by the query “ingles?” and he laughed aloud when I looked inquiringly at the others behind him in the office. The price was right, and he assured me that the seat was “bueno.” It was Harry, who with Vicky had shared my nearly two weeks of hiking and touring in southern Spain, who checked the ticket and announced, “Good, you’re in the shade.”

The three of us had earlier walked up and down the city’s Constitution Avenue searching for the Avis office at number 15 where they were to acquire their rental car, but that number had no identifiable arithmetic relation to any of the others along the avenue. The office was about to close for the weekend, so in desperation they hired a taxi, and even its driver required two attempts to find the office. It seemed particularly strange to me the next day when I had a similar problem in the bullring that the Sevillians should display such low regard for the power and utility of the numerals that were developed when Moorish influence was so strong here.

Once at my seat I realized that the distinction between shade and sun was a bit misleading; the stands were mainly uncovered, so the difference was more a matter of looking into the sun or having it behind you. The corrida was set for 7:00 p.m., which is more like 5:00 sun time in Spanish spring, so it would be fairly low at fight time. Stung by the recent revelation that it is no longer the only star with a planet, however, this once celestial object had essentially disappeared. There is indeed rain in the plain in Spain, plenty of it, as song and legend suggest, and it had been falling steadily all day. No American baseball manager would have ordered his team onto such wet ground, and if he did, the players would certainly go on strike, and as the rain intensified during the late afternoon, I, and several hotel desk personnel whom I consulted, shared the belief that the whole affair would be scratched. But when I happened by the ring a few hours beforehand, the scalpers, hawkers, and vendors were busily pursuing their trades in obvious expectation of a performance.

The bullring and the Hotel Becquer are about four blocks apart, which made it easy to amble over a half-hour early to observe prefight proceedings. The sand was quite wet under the tarps as they were rolled off, so the ground crew started putting down more sand. A twenty-minute delay was announced, by a handwritten sign carried around the arena, during which the freshly laid down sand had time to get soaked, and the last of the original puddles could be covered. But promptly at 7:20, with the rain coming down really hard, the grand procession took place. It did not live up to its reputation; the best part was the two three-horse teams that would remove the corpses of the “six brave bulls” advertised on the billboards. I was sorry that the bulls themselves were not allowed to join the parade.

Now Spanish bullfight fans are no less inconsiderate of their neighbors than are American football fans, but the former are much more likely to be smoking cigars–good quality cigars actually; it was only my personal standard of good neighborliness that prevented my joining in–than are their New World counterparts. With all the smoke and the open umbrellas neither good health nor clear vision was assured, but I determined to stay on despite these hazards. There is also a high-priced section, the grada, which is under cover and would have been the place to be this evening, and I suspect the local aficionados simply moved up for free as the evening progressed. On the other hand, there were very few spectators in the sol section, so one could have saved money, protected health, and improved vision all in one move by booking there.

Jaime, the young resident doctor I came to Spain to visit, has two arguments against those who oppose bullfighting: first, this particular species of bull would now be extinct were it not being bred for the ring; and secondly, the fight is a fair one in that the bull can certainly injure, indeed even kill the matador. To his first argument I respond that to breed an animal only so that it can be tortured to death five years later is hardly a humanitarian good deed; and if the second were really true, bulls would win half of the fights, which of course they don’t. My stated cynicism is purely in jest; it is not my place to criticize elements of another culture.

When the bull first enters the ring he faces several young men, toreros I suppose they’re called, each holding a rather large violet cape. His full-speed charge across the ring is beautiful to watch, and at the last possible second his human adversary steps behind a wooden barricade, essentially a shielded opening in the fence; most of the bulls pulled up short of the barrier, but one or two crashed headlong into it. After a few additional charges along chords of the ring’s circumference, the bull presumably had shown the matador what he is made of, and the best part of the fight began. The bull was still fresh and strong and well able to test the young man’s nerve and skill. More than once he deprived the matador of his cape, still the large violet one, and sent him running across the ring and over the wall, a maneuver I had not seen in movies or on television. This anyone could enjoy.

But then came the gruesome, and to me totally unsporting phase; Pedro Romero should have found a better alternative when he systematized bullfighting at Ronda two centuries ago. It was no surprise to see Papa Hemingway enshrined photographically on the walls of the ringside museum there, but I had not expected also to see pictures of a surprisingly slim, at least by his later standard, and young Orson Welles. In this second procedure two picadores, each mounted on a heavily padded and blindfolded horse, and each armed with a pica, which in my view seemed to be a short-bladed spear, were in the ring, but only one was involved with any one bull. It charges the horse from the side and is rewarded by having the pica jabbed into its back and then pushed and twisted to draw as much blood as possible. If the matador, or perhaps it’s a ringside official, is not satisfied, he orders a fresh pica sent out for a repeat attack. This evening’s picadores were huge, fat men, and the only thing artful or stylish about them or their performances were the hats they wore, with brims wide enough to ward off both sun and rain. Their horses stood so motionless while under attack that I wondered if they were sedated, exhausted, or simply senile.

The banderilleros seemed to have the most trouble of them all, possibly because of what must have been very treacherous footing. It was not until the sixth and final fight that one succeeded in neatly planting both pairs of bandilleras behind the bull’s neck; his action earned the evening’s loudest applause. I think the average was about three out of eight. It looked like very risky business, running past the head of a charging bull to implant two darts by thrusting them vertically downward. Two of the bulls were obviously agitated by these objects, bucking and twisting in futile attempts to throw them off. Daring though it may be, the work of these men lacks the grace and artistic quality of that done by the toreros and the matador himself.

When the latter returns to ring center, this time alone and using the smaller red cape, the bull is visibly tired and weakened. The procedures and motions of this phase are familiar, but they lack the speed and excitement of the fight’s initial step. The first two bulls did make solid contact with their matadors, however, and the last actually knocked his down, but after being dragged from the ring, that brave young man returned to finish his fight. During the evening each matador killed two bulls.

The final sword thrust looks like the most difficult and dangerous move of all. It was then that the second matador was lucky not to take a horn in his groin. The third required four attempts before driving the sword into his first bull’s heart but was much better with the second. The other two made clean kills of their first bulls but struggled with their second. And to conclude each fight one of the three-horse teams ignominiously dragged off the corpse. I don’t know what religious beliefs these noble creatures hold, but I hope they include an afterlife with green pastures, and more. An art form? Or a brutal spectator sport? Each observer must decide.

I was unaware of any conscious preconception of Madrid, but somehow the city didn’t quite live up to what must have been an unconscious expectation. Perhaps because of the similarity in the language spoken by their residents, I automatically compared it to Buenos Aires and Santiago, the only two South American capitals I have visited. Certainly its boulevards and avenues lack the grandeur of those in Buenos Aires, nor is the Tryp Fenix, although well located and highly rated, the equal of Santiago’s Herrera in either quality of service, particularly in the latter’s elegant dining room, nor friendliness of staff, but then the Herrera remains my favorite hotel in the entire world–with the possible exception of Nairobi’s Norfolk. These are at most superficial observations, however, and not to be taken too seriously.

My real introduction to the city was organized in exciting style by a resident expert, Jaime’s mother, Denise. She acquainted me with the urban bus network, pointed out the subway system, and then took me on a walking tour of the very interesting Old Madrid. The two of them had previously organized and left in my room a thick packet of tickets, maps, and tourist folders; this was extensively supplemented the weekend I met Jaime in Granada. When it was sufficiently late in the afternoon for a respectable Madrileña to take her lunch in public, about 3:00 I suppose, we made our way to the fashionable upstairs restaurant, Casa Lucio, where I ate the traditional rare steak that cooked on my plate as I watched, and was the only Mzungu, sorry, turista, in the place.

The next day I wandered on my own “past” the old city–my tortuous and empirical route hardly justifies use of the word “through”–for a visit to the public Palace gardens and then a walk alongside the much larger private section to the river that separates the city from its suburbs. The struggle back up the hill to the prominence occupied by the Palace and the Cathedral was a bit more tedious, and after finding my objective, the San Francisco el Grande church, closed despite the appeal of its name, I was more than ready to use the lesson on bus travel Denise had taught the previous day.

Late that afternoon I wandered a few blocks from the hotel to the Botanical Gardens, which I found to be a marvelous treat. Although it contains many lovely plantings of flowers, quite a few of which were familiar from home, and there were interesting birds to see and people to watch, it was the trees that truly starred. They are beautiful specimens, mature, and well labeled; again, many were familiar from the New World, and it was fun to be reminded of home. The park provided a welcome and refreshing rest after a day of walking. Madrid can be very hot in late April, even to a visitor from the tropics.

Toledo is a city whose image has long been impressed on my imagination, and when Denise offered to drive me there, I didn’t even try to conceal my excitement. It is the one place in the world that best displays the cooperative contributions of Jewish, Moorish, and Christian cultures, and the expulsion of the first two populations by the third certainly doomed this city to its current minor-league status, both intellectually and economically. It remains a fascinating and hospitable place to visit, however, particularly if one can avoid the heat and crowds of high summer. We began with an overview of the city from a nearby hill; the parador there provides a good prospect and is reliably said to be a pleasant spot to spend the night as well. After returning to the city proper, we parked near the Alcazar and then strolled past that oft-rebuilt fortress on the city’s highest corner to the Cathedral, which was too crowded to warrant careful viewing.

Now I must confess to being a very poor tourist. The reading of guidebooks in preparation for a trip has always seemed dull, and I can seldom locate the facts I want when the trip is over. For example, midway to Toledo Denise left the main road to enter a small town so that I could see a collection of five El Greco paintings. I thoroughly enjoyed them, and it was great fun beforehand to watch her get information about their location and then find someone to give us access to the church’s inner rooms so we could view them at close hand. Actually we both enjoyed those paintings considerably more than the much larger collection in Greco’s house in Toledo, where Denise volunteered that she didn’t like his work, in fact rather hated it; she had fooled me on the first five. But were they on display in the Hospital de la Caridad in the village of Illescas, that being the only such set mentioned in my guidebook, which Jaime had rightfully recommended highly, or had we visited something else? Sijui.

This same indifference to preparing beforehand diminishes my appreciation for the possibility of an afterlife. To be reincarnated as something totally different seems a complete waste of one lifetime of experience, and to bask for millennia in the reflected glory of some supernatural being remains totally incomprehensible to me. If one could return to finish doing what one was doing in the first life, that would be quite agreeable, but since one evidently cannot, the only sensible alternative is to make return visits to interesting places until energy and finances are exhausted. This is obviously necessary for Spain.

What stands out in my memory are the city walls, its gatehouses, buildings, and old meandering passageways, all too often dangerously clogged with modern vehicles, although we were still a month or two away from the tourist season. Denise finally gave up using her map and started asking questions of passersby; they not only happily provided the requested information, but even more happily volunteered a fifteen-minute discussion of the state of the economy, problems with the national football team, the prospects for good weather the next day, and I know not what else. The pace of life is not unlike that in East Africa, and her controlled impatience with it underscored her Belgian birth and metropolitan lifestyle. Two buildings particularly interested me: one, Santa María la Blanc, was originally a synagogue and dates from the late twelfth century; and the other, the 1544 Hospital de Santa Cruz, now houses a very large museum. Here, to mention yet another example of my touristic weakness, I have no recollection of “the Tapiz de los Astrolabus, a lovely 15th-century Flemish tapestry [that] shows the northern constellations in a kind of celestial garden.” Could I have overlooked this, one of my main interests?

Back in the city for three more days, I typically walked its streets, enjoying the parks, squares, and monuments that I encountered. The flattering idea that the Parque del Buen Retiro had been established to honor and accommodate older people like me was rudely squelched by the subsequent realization that it was part of a palace built for Philip IV. The nearby Naval Museum has much to offer, but my interest was concentrated on its cartographic gems: Juan de la Cosa’s 1500 mappa mundi, the earliest Spanish map to depict the American east coast; four Mediterranean portolans from the mid-16th century; and two Coronelli globes, both uncolored, the terrestrial one dated 1688, and the celestial, 1693. The 1375 Atlas Catalan, if it was there as claimed, must have been what I saw pasted to a piece of wood that was hung on the wall above a ship model that was much admired by young boys and their fathers. Again, I just don’t know.

The city and its environs had other charms. I thought the typical young Madrileña a bit short and thick of thigh for the height of her hemline, but there were notable exceptions. Somewhere in my notes is a number purporting to tell how many vehicles are registered in the city; all I recall now is that it’s awesome, but it does explain the necessary practice of triple parking in residential neighborhoods. On a weekend drive to see the nearby mountains and ski resorts as well as the Valle de los Caídos and El Escorial, Jaime and I stopped to walk along a lake in quest of birds and made two interesting discoveries. The first was hundreds of carp-like fish in the shallows along the shore wriggling in some predestined dance, perhaps the laying and fertilizing of eggs. The second was a flock of three birds with rotating blades, known technically as helicopters, that suddenly began to practice takeoffs and landings right next to us in an area we thought was a sanctuary for birds of the feathered kind. A ground-based observer informed us in the unaccented American English he had learned while training in the US that we were free to stay, but we decided to move our observing to a quieter spot.

On my last day in Madrid, Sunday, May 1, we planned to visit the Prado, where Denise would show me the Flemish section, which not surprisingly is of special interest to her. I was to view anything else I wanted to see beforehand, but of course I never did; when the weather is good, I stay outside. This means that I’m very well acquainted with London museums, but I’ve never been inside the Louvre, for example. Other than in the US May 1 is Workers Day, we all know that, and it was to be celebrated officially the next day, Monday. But museums are almost universally closed on Mondays anyway, so that would not amount to a holiday for museum workers. Consequently, they took matters into their own hands, and the Prado was also closed on Sunday, unofficially and without any announcement, but with total effectiveness. And Denise and I? When we were finally persuaded of the closure, she took me to a plain little chapel, named San Antonio de la Florida, that is at once Goya’s monument and his burial place. Here it was that in 1798 he was commissioned to do a series of frescoes on the walls, ceiling, and dome. We spent quite a few quiet moments there, and I, at least, was happy that the Prado was closed. The weather was fine, it was also Mother’s Day in Spain, but as Denise had remarked earlier, “Every Sunday is Mother’s Day for me.” What a lovely arrangement.

The visit to Madrid, with its walks, drives, and family dinners, had been more than satisfying, and my only regret on leaving was that yet another revisitation of the African malaise accompanied me, but meeting my Basque guide and driver, Martin and Iñaki, respectively, and my fellow “Ramblers in Southern Spain,” Vicky and Harry, pushed that distress from mind, and the Basques’ obvious ignorance of traffic patterns in the city even introduced an unexpected gaiety into our departure. That first day, when finally free of Madrid, was quite typical of most we shared. In the village of Aragosa we separated from our car and driver and followed on “a level track along the Rio Dulce through poplar forest and groves of golden elms” to the spot foreordained for our reunion with “Nicki” and the first of about a dozen picnic lunches. That the promised “blacktails, vultures and kites” soaring overhead turned out to be Egyptian vultures was fine with me, but it had been so long since my last sighting that Martin’s help was needed to identify them. Nor was I at all disappointed to find that the luncheon beverage would always be wine, typically a Rioja tinto except when we drank the local product in Valdepeñas; Spain has the enviable virtue of offering quality wine in cork-finished fifths at a price lower than that for equal volumes of milk or spring water.

We walked a fair distance after lunch to “Peregrino, a typical Castillian village built at the foot of a ruined castle,” where we met our car and driver for the third time that day. Actually Nicki left the car in town and met us at the castle ruins; an enthusiastic mountaineer, like Martin, he never tired of calling himself a “climmer,” with the vowel pronounced very short. Our overnight stay was in Sigüenza, “an extraordinary, harmonious medieval town, full of impressive monuments including palaces, museums, a Hermitage, and a 12th century cathedral and fortress with a magnificent gate and many crenelated towers.” Our rooms were in the Parador Castillode Siguenza “that had its beginnings as a Visigoth castle, continued as a Moorish fortress, and finally became an Episcopal palace.” To me it remains an impressive castle. The cathedral’s interior is worth the drive from Madrid, and its exterior still displays plenty of bullet scars from the Civil War.

Our second day’s walk concluded with a rock “climming” demonstration by our driver, using all the latest techniques and equipment, but it was the extensive walls around the unspoiled, quiet little town of Albarraccín that excited me the most. I walked beside them both that evening and again the next morning before breakfast; my only regret is the inability to capture them photographically in proper light. The next day’s hike, featuring visits to some shallow caves with paleolithic rock paintings, was fun and informative, but the best part of the day was spent walking around the old section of Cuenca, perched as it is atop a cliff. Buildings here do indeed hang partially over the cliff, and, fortunately our hotel, although modern, was so situated. The Plaza Mayor and the 18th-century arches of the Ayuntamiento under which it ends, are particularly lovely and just a block or two from the hotel.

But, all too soon it seemed, we had to leave for the plains of La Mancha and the fabled windmills, more than a little overrated I fear, if what we encountered are typical. Before lunch, which I reached still alive only by having some wine and a first taste of Manchego cheese immediately after the tour, we visited what my guidebook aptly describes as “a grandly exotic 15th-century castle outside Belmonte.” Afterward we rode through hectare upon hectare of young wheat, blue-green at the roots graduating to near chartreuse at the heads, interspersed with tilled fallow fields, shrub-covered hillsides, and occasional small clumps of deciduous trees. The ubiquitous white rocks and red poppies lining the roadway served to highlight the contrasting browns and greens of the surrounding countryside.

And then suddenly the vines, mainly stumps of the rootstock actually, of Valdepeñas began appearing more and more frequently on both sides of the road, the poppies became increasingly prolific in a seemingly successful effort to match the roses of Bordeaux, and then we saw the first windmill. It was picturesque, enough so that we stopped for our very late lunch in the first clump of trees that we found. Considerably later, when we stopped at a cluster of about eight, I wondered if their sole purpose is to transform dazzling reflected light into overexposed photographs in millions of touring cameras.

Almagro has become one of my favorite towns, and its Parador National de Almagro, in the former Convent of San Francisco, built in 1596, seemed to me the nicest place we stayed. The town’s Plaza Mayor is particularly attractive, with a two-story arcade, painted white with green trim, that houses shops, offices, and residences on its long sides. This structure is also home to the oldest theater in Spain, the Corral de Comedies, which poor timing prevented us from touring. If memory serves correctly, the town name honors the man who pushed the Spanish Conquest to its southernmost limit in Chile.

On the next day’s drive we encountered the first of millions of olive trees and in a very few minutes realized Martin’s promise of seeing far more than anyone could possibly want. Bead, a nearly perfect sixteenth-century Renaissance town, completely captured our imaginations for the hour or two Martin left us free to roam; we could have stayed much longer. But we began to sense that his blood pressure and pulse rate were increasing as our timetable approached the date for our visit to the first of several mountain national parks, so we pushed on without complaint.

Martin Azalea is a consummate mountaineer consumed by Basque nationalism. His peaks, mountains that is, include Everest–he is the first Spaniard to ascend it–Ama Dablam, Kanchenjunga, and Cho Oyu, all in the Himalayan area, and I think numerous others in the Alps and Andes. Two attempts on K2 and another on Everest narrowly missed, and he is scheduled to attempt K2 again early next year. His nationalistic views are simple: Basques are unique, in racial origin, in language, and in destiny, but at the same time there is no Basque leader he would trust for five seconds. With us, at least, he was gentle in his extremism. The one point I will concede without further contemplation, and with no personal experience, is that Basque cuisine is the best in Spain; San Sebastian has three top-rated restaurants to Madrid’s one.

Our first mountain stop, for two nights, was in the little village of La Iruela, right beside the Sierra de Cazorla. An afternoon arrival allowed only a short hike the first day, but it was memorable, pitting us against a thunder and lightning storm that produced hailstones large enough to hurt when they hit. The next day’s walk was longer and more demanding. We drove for over an hour to the other side of a ridge so we could hike back along and then over it to a pickup spot not too far from our hotel. It was beautiful: at first enclosed forest–we encountered two varieties of deer–then open rocky plateau, and finally a contour trail down the ridge. And of course the flatland below was filled with another few millions of olive trees. That night we forced Martin to dine out in better than his customary style–actually none of his favorite haunts was open. Although only two dinners were included in the tour price, he was reluctant to spend much on himself, so we ate modestly. But my dinner of gazpacho, fine roast young goat, and marvelous fresh strawberries, at the Restaurante de Sagra in nearby Cazorla, was easily my best meal since leaving Madrid.

I don’t recall ever reading Washington Irving’s Tales of the Alhambra, and there’s a chance, a very good chance, that I never got past the Tales of Sleepy Hollow. But never mind, to read the works of Frederico García Lorca is likely a better way to capture something of the essence of Granada. It was refreshing on our drive there finally to see something other than olive trees, in this instance the snow-covered peaks of the Sierra Nevada glistening in the distance beneath a soft pastel-blue sky. The entrance to the city, which seemed more circuitous than necessary–Nicki is anything but an urban driver–made it appear less impressive than it really is, but then how could any downtown compete with the Alhambra? The Plaza Nueva, at the beginning of the route up the hill on which it reposes, and several buildings on it have considerable class, however.

The Alhambra, like the Taj Mahal, is impossible to describe, and it would be pointless to try. Each creates an impression, a sensation, that transcends words. The former is so intricate, so fine in detail, that each tiny space conveys its own inspiration. Perhaps this is why the hordes of people, most in rapidly moving tour groups, seem to matter so little; there is always something in view on which to focus the eye and the mind. The latter impresses more with its grandeur of scale, the lavishness of its proportions, yet it is hardly bereft of intricate detail. Still, the handful of people standing in its courtyard some eight years ago, seemed to be in the way, not belonging there. I wept openly at the sight of the Taj Mahal but not in the Alhambra. But the passage of time has certainly hardened the emotions. It would be easy to spend many hours, days in fact, at either place.

The hikes seemed to get more and more interesting toward the end of our trip, perhaps because the terrain was getting a bit more rugged. The morning we left Granada was beautifully clear and fresh, and the air in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, to which we detoured for our outing, was crisp, almost chilly. We stopped on the way to investigate some cork trees, the first I had ever seen, and from the same spot got a lovely first view of one of several sparkling “white villages” through which we would drive–up–before walking along the river valley–down–to one of them, Capileira, where yet again our car and driver were to meet us. The walk was lovely, the car was in town, but Nicki was not; after considerable searching Martin discovered, much to his displeasure, that Nicki had gone down to the river for a swim–even in the mountains it’s hot by midday–and had fallen asleep afterward. The fire of Basque anger flared quickly and hotly, but just as abruptly it was extinguished, and all was peaceful again.

Our parador for that night, a totally contemporary building with no particular history, is in the town of Antequera, from which we left early the next morning to investigate two of three nearby neolithic dolmens–ca 2500 BC–known as the Cuevas de Menga, and then to walk through a wildly eroded limestone region whose labyrinthine routes put me in mind of California’s Pinnacles National Monument, although here the new birds and flowers added to the interest. Nearby Ronda is one of those picture postcard towns, with its scenic bridges over the deep gorge, a few old monuments–the Moorish bath was most interesting–a bloody history from Roman times through the Civil War, the beautifully sited and venerable Queen Victoria Hotel, where we spent the night, and last but not least of course, the 1785 Plaza de Toros, the only bullring in which I’ll likely ever set foot.

Our final walk was a good one, particularly the first part. We staggered up a rocky ridge under the blazing morning sun and were rewarded with sweeping views from on top; Mt. Rainier’s Sourdough Gap immediately came to mind. We then had a very peaceful hour or two on a soft trail past interesting flowers and occasional groves of the rare Spanish fir–Abies pinsapo–before reaching rocky roads and raucous teenagers. Our route was now along the canal of a hydroelectric project, however, so it mattered little; we slithered through a tunnel dug in the rock to convey the water, which explained why Martin had ordered us to carry flashlights, and then scrambled down a steep trail in sight of the penstocks. It was a long walk, and we were happy to reach our lunch spot. Martin even produced a second bottle of wine, whether in delight that our walks were ended, or from chagrin for all the noisy school kids we encountered–happily most were going in the opposite direction–or just because we looked so hot and tired, I don’t know, but both were appreciated. The little town in which we stayed that night, Arcos de la Frontera, is a charming place, and we enjoyed walking all around, that is until it started pouring rain.

And so we came to Seville, certainly apart from the Alhambra itself the epitome of the sensual charm of Al-Andalus. Starting with the 12th-century minaret, Giralda, still surviving from the mosque originally on this site but named for the later Christian weathervane at its top, and now incorporated into the 15th-century Cathedral; continuing with the Alcazar, like the Alhambra badly marred by an insensitive Charles V; then to the buildings of the 1929 exposition centered on Maria Luisa Park; and finally to the site of the 1992 World’s Fair. A good walker can pass through almost a millennium of history and culture here in a single day. Flamenco dancing and bullfighting remain regular events, and the young women seem slightly more elongated, of darker complexion, and often, like Carmen, wear carnations in their hair. The cigar factory still stands, but now it’s a university; the plaques along its outer wall read Fabrica-Real de Tabacos. But best of all, right across the street from this historic building is the one-star Michelin Restaurante Egaña Oriza. It lacks the prestige of the dining rooms in Seville’s two luxury hotels, Alfonso XIII and the Colon, but I bet it’s more fun; my dinner there with Vicky and Harry was so enjoyable that I returned for lunch my last day in town.

Impressions from this stay in Seville crowd together, and as always questions remain. What species of kestrel nests in the alcoves and interstices of the cathedral walls? Did Ferdinand III actually ride his horse up the Giralda, as he could since it contains a ramp, not stairs? And not all of the impressions were positive. The Cathedral, “the largest Gothic edifice in the world,” seems about five meters too tall to have a pleasing architectural scale, and I was not excited by Columbus’ sarcophagus; those of the Catholic Kings in Granada’s cathedral, and indeed that building itself were far more impressive. The Casa de Pilatos, although an astonishing building, has no connection with any residence of Pontius Pilate and is much too busy for my taste. These are minor points, but I did encounter one big surprise and a major disappointment.

The surprise was the content of the Alfonsine Tables. On becoming interested a few decades ago in the transmission of ancient knowledge, particularly astronomy, from Byzantium, through the states of North Africa, and then back to Western Europe, I first learned the name Isidore of Seville, who lived and worked here in the sixth and seventh centuries. He was a leading scholar of that time, became the Bishop, and was ultimately canonized; the work for which he is renowned, the Encyclopedia, is a summary of all extant knowledge at the time. The book came to me one summer in a 99-page English translation, bound in white, and borrowed from the UW Science Library, as I recall. My reading left me convinced that Isidore believed in the reality of a flat earth as depicted by the mappa mundi in his book. The map is of that very simple type called T-O maps by contemporary scholars, and it has the distinction of being the very first map in the whole world to be reproduced by the printing process; Shirley accords it position one in his definitive volume of printed world maps until 1700.

Knowledge like that of Isidore essentially disappeared from Europe for several centuries and was ultimately reintroduced under Moorish aegis. During those years the Moors made additions to such classical works as Ptolemy’s Almagest, the Arabic title for his work on astronomy. It has long been my understanding that the Alfonsine Tables were such an addition or updating of astronomical information. But what did I find under this title in the largest Gothic structure on earth? A set of folding gold cases, encrusted with jewels and containing reliquaries, more than two hundred bits of tooth and bone!

And the disappointment? I have believed for many years that the Spanish Government still has numerous maps, charts, diaries, and other items from the Age of Discovery under lock and key. My overly Protestant antecedents also believed this and ascribed it to some sort of Papist plot, but recent experiences suggest to me it is more likely due to bureaucratic bungling, laziness, or a shortage of bribes. While looking through some of the tourist literature on Seville, I read that many of these items are stored in the Archive of the Indies, a structure I found wedged between the Alcazar and the Cathedral, hard by two well-rated eateries I lacked time to try. But this building proved more imponderable even than the bullring. I circled it several times daily and never did find an open door or even a closed door with a sign suggesting that at some hour on some day it might be transformed into an open door.

My queries to American Express and other travel agencies produced uniformly discouraging replies; a prior appointment was essential, and a prospective visitor must have serious reasons for requesting admission. So I turned to my trusted guidebook and read once again: “The Archive of the Indies [is] the repository of all the reports, maps, drawings and documents the crown collected during the age of exploration. The collection, the richest in the world, has not even yet been entirely sifted through by scholars; some of it is always on display, and though the exhibits change constantly they are always worth a look (daily except Sat and Sun 10-1).” Well, who knows?

Maybe another time in the company of one of those Carmenesque cigar rollers with carnations in her hair and at least one dagger in her garter I can find a way in.

W. Vance Johnson

19 May 94