The Road from Santiago

  We, dear fellow pilgrim, are fine discriminators of beauty.  Not for us the mere mathematics of the stars, falling from review. We regard the one and five stars as things that smatter the pages of the digital world as opinions cast, often, without care or regard.  However. The numbers don’t lie.  The Parque de Maria Luisa gets from 4.8 stars from 41,587 reviews. That is a lot potential reviews that could drag it down which don’t exist.  We are going to spend the day here. The Parque began to become a thing when the Infanta Luisa Fernanda donated the land to the city of Seville.  In 1911 Jean-Claude Nicolas Forestier redesigned the gardens into their present pleasant shape and the work of Anibal Gonzalez for the Ibero-American Exposition nailed it.  Forty-eight minutes ago Lissoeth wrote ‘ Very nice for walking and relaxing’ . As a contrarian I, of course, looked at the one star reviews.   E.S. objected to horses pulling carriages. Nina obje...

  A short walk but, I hope, an interesting one as we progress along the Avenida de Jerez towards the centre of Seville. We left Seville, yesterday, making progress in the Age of Reason. Things boomed in the nineteenth, with a ceramics factory being established in La Cartuja and the period 1843-68 seeing a construction boom which included the Isabel II bridge, street lighting and pavements.  The Museo de Bellas Artes opened in 1904 in 1929 the city hosted the Ibero-American Exposition.  Population wise the city grew from 100,000 in 1842 to 684,000 today, with above 20% growth in the 1920s, 40s, 50s and 70s. We are passing the Autismo Andalucía Federación Andaluza de Asociaciones de Padres con hijos Autistas. https://www.autismoandalucia.org/   You know where you stumble into something and don’t feel qualified to comment. About nine months ago things got tasty.  A concerted one star attack on the place suggested they were not supportive of autistic kids any more. ...

  The thing about Spain was it was close enough to be real and far enough away to be unfamiliar.  Being across the Pyrenees it was ripe, once they had done with all that implacable Catholic Empire bit, into being a land of exotic gipsies and brigands who would fight Napoleon at the drop of a hat, while being chivalric to capture English m’ladies - who were having quiet enough trouble with bed bugs in inns and surly muleteers.  Welcome to Seville. Seville dates back to the 8th century when the Phoenicians turned up to do their thing. The Romans, under the command of Scipio Africanus, did for the Carthaginians in 206BC and sent veteran soldiers to the area. Hispalis, as it was known, grew and was the birth place of Emperors Trajan and Hadrian.  I’m not sure if we will go near it but five arches of aqueduct do remain in the city. After various Vandals and Visigoths the Moors besieged Seville in 712 and Prince Abd al-Aziz made the place capital of al-Andalus until his co...

  As I stare at the road ahead I wonder if what we have here is the old road, next to the old N-4, what we are on, next to the new N-4.  Whatever it may be we will head north for a date with two sisters. Dos Hermanas was founded in 1248 by Ferdinand III of Castile in honour of the two sisters of his commander, Gonzalo Nazareno - Elvira and Estefania.  Today it has 142,000 people living it, making it the 48th most populated city in Spain - and all that while being jolly close to Seville.  Most of this growth his occurred in the last 80 years. It - or should itbe they - bumbled along around 5000 in the mid nineteenth century, got to 11000 in the 1920s, managed 21,000 by 1950 and then continued to zoom up to 128,000 by 2011.  Peak growth was in the 1970s and 80s where -in each decade - the place increased by about 45%. Temperature wise we are heading towards peak hot - next month to be exact. Currently the average is 24oC, with average maximums being 31oC and a mer...