Narrow, chaotic streets

Narrow, chaotic streets hide a multitude of secret places – squares, fountains, gardens, churches, palaces, bars _ allowing everybody to discover and claim for their own , some favourite hidden corner. Mine is a bar just around the corner from the Bridge of Triana. Here at, a shiny stainless steel counter, a team of hard-working waiters served stewed bull’s tail, tomato soaked in oil and herbs, cubes of marinated, battered dogfish and glasses of cold manzanilla sherry. Also, though, there is the chapel at the Hospital de la Caridad. The prior, and chief benefactor, here was the infamous, if reformed, seventeenth century philanderer Miguel de Mañara. This prototype of Don Juan asked for the following words to be inscribed where his ashes were put to rest: ?Here lies the bones and ashes of the worst man the world has ever known.’ The dark, cruel painting here by Juan Valdés, with their disintegrating corpses of finely dressed bishops, seem to accuse this overstuffed city of being obsessed with mundane brilliance. The chapel is so full of saints, virgins, tubby, winged cherubs and the inevitable, in Seville, paintings of Murillo that as one local writer told me, ‘There is simply no room for anything else, ‘ Then there is the broad boulevard known as the Alameda de Hercules at night, with its bohemian, slightly shabby air. Around the corner, prostitutes sit out on chairs in the street, fanning themselves in the heat. Even they are not in a hurry to hustle. Once you start making the list pf personal jewels, in fact it is hard to stop. Seville, like a haughty
Andalusian Beauty, simply demands your attention.
From the book ‘Ghosts of Spain’ By Giles Tremet