Maundy Mantilla Thursday

This is one of the big day’s for Seville’s donas and senoritas. Women watching the processions dress in their best little black dress and wear a glorious black lace mantilla that falls to the backs of their knees.

We started to see them as we walked towards Seville’s weird ‘mushroom’ or ‘parasol’. It was drizzling, not a good sign for the later processions. Along the way we stumbled upon Casa De Pilatos, and decided to go inside. It turns out that this is the Andalucian palace par excellence and has been used in location shooting for numerous movies. Anyway, it is stunning. It has a mujeda ground floor and exterior, a Renaissance upper floor and Romantic decorative features. It sounds like a mess but judge for yourself. For the record, it has over 150 different glazed tile designs... The only low point was our guide for the upstairs private apartments. He demonstrated a lack of love for his work which was a little surprising given that it paid for his immaculate grooming.

Feeling a little sensory overload, we stopped for lunch. Nearby was the Metropol Parasol, the “mushroom” and, spectacular as it is, it does look like a fungus. 

The weather was fine again so we walked to the river just in time for a cruise. Our boat had a capacity of about 300 and there were 12 passengers on board. We spent a peaceful hour seeing various oddities and every bridge in the area. 

From there we headed back for a siesta broken by ominous claps of thunder. By the time we headed out for our afternoon tour of the Alcázar there were drifts of hail on the ground. The park was flooded. Stunned Sevilleans sheltered in bodegas and no doubt pondered the fate of their Maundy Thursday processions. Lyn treated the wet cobblestones with so much respect that granny with a walker would have moved quicker. We arrived at the meeting point for the tour to a comical scene. The guides were trying to sort arriving guests into language groups, get ticket money from all and decorate the validated with identifying yellow sticky dots - while the rain fell steadily and the largest Gothic cathedral on the planet, 50 metres away, was clanging away with every bell in its arsenal.

Eventually we set off with our personable, orange-clad guide. It was still raining so he prefaced every description with “Guys! Attention to the floor!” The Alcázar is an impressive place. The problem for us was that: it was gloomy and raining, these buildings depend for their impact on natural light, we’d seen most of the elements previously in Córdoba, Granada, and here, and finally, much of the time our attention was on the floor! Lyn liked the gardens best. These she was able to enjoy because, incredibly, the sun was out again.

We headed home as Nazarenes from all points began to walk optimistically in the direction of their churches. We hoped for their sakes that Maundy  could still be saved and the mantillas could reappear.