I have just come back from Seville. This is a picture of a
cross daubed on a wall that I took during a meander around the back streets.
I don’t think I have ever visited a more conservative,
Catholic country than Spain and I speak as someone who lived in Italy for six
years. There were churches on every corner and convents across the road from
one another.
No black faces, or brown faces for that matter. Didn’t see a
single coloured person in two weeks. According to Rough Guide, there are only
15000 Jews in Spain [fifteen thousand individuals, if you didn’t get that]. How
did that happen? This is a country of over sixty million. We walked past the
Cathedral. When it was built in c.1500, it was the largest Cathedral in the
world, but although it is regarded as beautiful, with high quality wooden
carvings and gold altarpieces; everything that can be nailed down lavishly
silver-plated, I couldn’t bring myself to go inside. It was built and paid for
in blood by the massacre of at least a quarter of a million Aztecs and other South
American tribes, who saw their gold and silver relics scooped into the holds of
sailing ships and taken back to Spain. And were forced into slavery to mine for
even more.
By Christians.
But it is a nice city; incredibly hot even in October. We
enjoyed walking about however, and the Alcazar, the Moorish citadel is very beautiful.
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