Strolling through Seville

Seville is not exactly my favourite city, but I work for one of the august higher educational establishments there, so I do have to go to the place  regularly to impart classes. As I live in Sanlúcar de Barrameda, which is at the mouth of the river Guadalquivir - the same river that runs through Seville - this involves a two-hour commute by coach or, indeed a two-hour drive by car. if you're interested, you can read previous posts about Sanlúcar here, here, here or here.

An aside: "How", you might well ask, "does the car journey last as long as the bus journey, especially as you don't stop in the five major towns en route?" And indeed: "Isn't it cheaper and more environmentally friendly to use public transport?". And I would answer "The car journey is just as long because as I don't have to get up so early, I arrive in Seville in time to get caught up in two separate traffic jams, one on either side of the city". And in answer to the second I would reply that "As my classes start first thing in the morning, no bus arrives in Seville early enough for me to get to my first class on time, thus necessitating an overnight stay in the city the night before. This makes the bus journey more expensive than going by car so, unfortunately, the environment loses out on that one. Furthermore, try sitting on the bus next to someone with halitosis who has in all probability just had toast with olive oil and garlic for breakfast. That will dampen your enthusiasm - even if the bus journey does give you four hours more reading time". I once made the journey on a bus that stank of rotten teeth - wherever I tried sitting. This, incidentally, is not an indictment of the hygiene habits - or lack thereof - of the great Spanish public. People in Spain tend to be scrupulously clean; more so than in most European countries, especially, entre nous, the one sandwiched between Spain and England. Unfortunately, a lot of people seem to forget, here as elsewhere, that mouths can be just as noisesome as armpits - or even worse. 

A useless piece of information: Listerine was originally a badly-selling floor cleaning product, but a clever marketing chappie discovered halitosis and convinced the manufacturer to rebottle it as a mouthwash. I suppose that the composition has changed since then. This was a cynical move by anyone's standards, but the marketer deserves a Nobel prize for services to humanity, though there's still a long way to go before we are no longer assaulted by the halitosis of our fellows. 

Digressions over, here are the photos. Let's start in Sanlúcar as I prepare to leave:

Sanlúcar's Calzada de la Duquesa with Doñana across the
 river in the extreme background.

Quinto Centenario Bridge. The winning design was,
strange to relate, submitted by the brother of
the then Minister for Foreign Affairs.
  Image courtesy of Panoramio

The first traffic jam I run into is on the access roads to the Quinto Centenario bridge. Built for Seville's Expo '92 - more of which later - it was rumoured to have been designed with eight lanes. Apparently, three of these lanes disappeared unaccountably along with part of the budget to build it, so it was built with five lanes. All rather silly considering that three lanes of traffic in each direction converge there. This problem is further compounded on the southern side of the bridge as there are a further two filter lanes full of cars jostling to get onto the access.Furthermore,the lanes on the bridge itself are illegal as they contravene the minimum width required by Spanish law.




Having parked my car, I walk past the Andalusian Regional Parliament which used to be a hospital, called Hospital de la Cinco Llagas - literally the hospital of the five running sores - a reference to Christ's wounds. Now, however, there's only one enormous running

Hospital de las Cinco Llagas. Suppurating with corruption.

sore there - the blatant corruption and money-grabbing antics of the politicians as they root around in the trough. To give you an idea of the scope of the problem, there's a corruption case grinding through the courts at the moment involving the alleged defalcation of over €1bn through various clever wheezes involving politicians of the ruling (Socialist) regime and high officials of trades unions, as well as quite a few of their family members. If in power, the Right would be just as bad.

A view downriver to the Torre Pelli skyscraper

I then cross the river, going over Santiago Calatrava's spectacular Alamillo Bridge to what used to be the Expo '92 International Exhibition which celebrated the fifth centenary of the Discovery of the Americas - yet another opportunity for the politicians, their families and friends to grab money from the State with the complicity of the government of the time. To be scrupulously fair, however,it must be said that lorryloads of the marble that entered the Expo site for use there found its way into hundreds of bathrooms and kitchens in the city of Seville. Everyone involved had their share of the cake, not just the politicoes. I think I'm not mistaken in stating that the final Expo audits, like the EU's annual budgets, have yet be signed off by the corresponding Courts of Auditors.

In its day, the bridge caused a furore among the more narrow-minded Sevilian traditionalists because the height if its arm meant that it, not the cathedral belltower, was the first thing seen by people arriving in Seville from the North. Now they moan about the Torre Pelli which I mentioned in a previous post. 

Two views of the bridge: one from the bridge deck looking towards the backwards-leaning mast and the other taken from behind the mast itself. there is a widespread view among structural engineers that the roadway is self-supporting and that the mast and stays are there for show only. Still, it is rather pretty. Originally there were going to be two such bridges spanning two separate arms of the Guadalquivir, but the money ran out - or found its way into politicans' pockets faster than it could be spent on the two bridges - so the second bridge, connected to the Alamillo by a breathtaking causeway (see the photo below) is a more humdrum box bridge

The causeway. in the distance you can see a white mast leaning away
from the structure. There is one on either side, recalling the mast of
the Alamillo bridge itself.

Municipal allotments - but how are they allotted?

Once over the bridge, my stroll takes me past some allotments among the orange groves that the Expo left untouched. Apparently, to get one you need to have friends in certain places.

And finally it's on towards one of the two centres where I give my classes before getting into my car and escaping from Seville and its monuments to institutionalised corruption.

When I started to write this entry, I was just going to write a brief, bland commentary on the photos, but as I started, I realised that at almost every turn I could make a comment on corruption - a sorry state of affairs indeed. 

Why Cyclists Are More Dangerous Than North Korea

I’m sure that older readers will remember Ricky Martin’s song, María: with the unforgettable chorus of Un, dos, tres, un pasito p’alante María. Un dos tres, un pasito p’atrás  - literally 1,2,3 one step forward María, 1,2,3 one step backwards. If not, here’s a link.

Well this is how pedestrians have to walk, or rather jump, about the pavements in Seville as cyclists zoom recklessly towards them, making the most of their god-given right to put everyone's life at risk – including their own. Indeed, watching a pedestrian trying to walk along the average Sevillian street is rather like watching someone in a Western “dance” as the baddies shoot at their feet. Desperation, lack of concerted coordination and the fear of imminent death or mutilation are common to both sufferers.

And the problem is this: enlightened Seville (a city for people[1], according to its own rather brainless propaganda) now has cycle lanes incorporated onto its pavements, but cyclists here (indeed, anywhere) respect neither the lanes nor the traffic rules. Speeding cyclists are a greater menace than speeding cars (at least in general terms cars do not speed along the pavement!). Yet for some reason, best known to themselves, cyclists do of course have greater right of way than any other form of life.

Cycling seems to have become a new form of Fascism. Once the wearing of a black, brown, or blue shirt with its corresponding armband raised the possessor above the ranks of the common herd. He – or she – became an exalted member of that class of  beings who, as Orwell so famously put it, are more equal than others. Such fascists, or communists (basically the same genus of being) could do what the hell they liked without fear of reprisal or punishment by the authorities. Now to be more equal than the rest of urban humanity what you need is a bike, tight fitting Lycra, no undies and a total lack of inhibition about parading your middle-aged bag of rusty spanners around.

Once mounted upon his or her gleaming, non-polluting charger, the rider becomes a sort of knight in hi-viz armour, bearing down upon the cycle-less villeins with all the contempt and recklessness of a Norman aristocrat taking a constitutional on his palfrey among - or even over - his serfs.

“By what right?” You may cry. “By the divine right of the non-polluting eco-warrior” Sallies forth the reply as, bell a-ring, lights a-twinkle pedals a-whirr and bollocks a-jiggle (with a bit of luck he'll be rendered incapable of spawning any progeny) the oppressor bears down on you. You have two options: stand your ground and get hospitalised or jump back and let the arrogant bastard waft by unchallenged.

 Teeth a-grind, we let the chevalier thunder past, as in days of yore. 

In a word, most cyclists are arrogant, selfish turds who deserve a timely stick thrust through their flashing spokes.

And so to North Korea. For all of the chemical weapons, nuclear bombs and avunculophage dogs that that particularly distasteful regime might vaunt, as yet it has not been a real threat to my life and physical integrity – or indeed yours, unless you have the misfortune to live there. The cyclist, on the other hand, is a real daily meance and a greater threat to your, or my, existence than the hermits of Pyong Yang. "Leave North Korea alone!", I say.  Get the UN Security Council onto the case of the cyclo-fascists.

Let us not, however, bomb them back to the Stone Age; let us merely put them back where they belong – on the roads, not the pavements – where they can put their own lives at risk without risking ours - even if this will entail some damage to cars. Either that, or send the whole parcel of them to Guantánamo and thence unleash them on the Castros.

---

[1] As opposed to a city for insects, dolphins or lemurs, I suppose.

The noblest prospect a right-minded Englishman living in Seville ever sees is the road that leads him to anywhere outside that particular nest of complacent narrow-mindedness.

A truly welcome sight for escapees from
Miarmaland (Seville)

Please excuse my misquoting Samuel Johnson's famous saying "The noblest prospect a Scotsman ever sees is the road the leads him to England".

So, this weekend I escaped yet again to Cádiz and have had many an adventure. Perhaps the most memorable was a 1-hour long conversation with 3 cooking-wine-drinking gentlemen in a small square near the municipal market and who between them boasted a grand total of 9 teeth - 3 each. How about that for share and share alike?

Conversation ranged from the wisdom (or lack of same)of mixing Coca Cola with gin, instead of Tonic,  to the Spanish Civil War, the Phoenicians, and the use of Sherry barrels to age Scotch whisky. One of my new-found friends used to be a cellarman in a Sherry bodega until it went bust. I suspect that he probably took most of the production home with him in his gut, leaving the empty barrels to be sold onto Scotch distillers.

They invited me to share their cheap white wine and hard-won ciggies. I declined both, claiming that I didn't smoke and that 10.30 in the morning was a tad too early to be drinking alcohol. Both refusals were taken in good part. I did however share in their breakfast brought to them by a waiter from a nearby bar. A rather disconcerting question: did I look like I might be a new addition to the band? Perhaps I was going to be inducted into a secret brotherhood whose initiation ceremony included the chiselling out of all of one's teeth except for 3 front lowers! 

Walking through the narrow, yet luminous, streets of Cádiz you can perceive a certain feeling of expectancy; the feeling that anything is possible. Whatever it is, there is a certain surreal undertow to the situation. You feel that things are not quite right, that time or reality is slightly out of kilter. I insist, I did not drink any of the wine! My theory is that this is due to the fact that we are talking about a true seaport; there is a refreshing openness here - a stark contrast to the inward-looking city of Seville where time stopped in the 16th century. The Sevillian mentality has fossilised, while Cádiz, like my own beloved Liverpool, is quite simply mental. There is a refreshing madness in the air and you suspect nothing is quite what it seems - except,  perhaps, the dog poo if you step in it.

A good example of how Seville is a self-centred city full of self-centred people (the Spanish word is ombliguista, literally navel-staring) is its April Fair. This is a celebration of all that is Sevillian - closed groups who save up all year to rent a small marquee with a security guard on the door prohibiting entry to all who are not members or who do not have invitations (unless it's the guard's own cousins). The result? crowds of people wandering about the Feria ground, threading their way through vomit, puddles of horse piss and and steaming piles of equine shit. Meanwhile the fortunate ones look on impassively from behind a fence and drink overpriced Sherry and beer, and are deafened by low-quality music played on even lower quality stereos. 

Another example - and one that really grinds my gears even after 27 years in Seville: people simply push past you without so much as an excuse me. Not so in Cádiz where people open doors for each other and even say "excuse me".  

I must, in all fairness however, mention the breathtaking arrogance and bad manners of a Gibraltarian Bobby who whistled to me and snapped his fingers at me like a dog the last time I went to Gib (the Spanish can have it for all I care. Full of money-launderers and drug traffickers, it is a scandal to the good name of Great Britain). After obediently pulling over, I remonstrated with him. He apologised and told me he had thought I was Spanish because of the plates on my car, thus compounding his offensiveness. I immediately demanded to see his superior officer. 

The next post will be less vitriolic and will concentrate either on my journey down to Cádiz or on its magnificent provincial museum.