Spanish Motorcycle Diaries - Day 7 (part I). From Seville to Castel de Vide (Portugal) (May 2017)

Back in the country whose language sports such an evocative words as ‘saudade’. Not been here since a single Lisbon city trip in 1992, a different era then.

We really go to know Iberia through the back door. Thanks to our friends Sigrid and Alberto, who hosted us a number of times in the mid-1980s, we started off with the Aztecs and Maya in Mexico, training our ear on the sing-song of Mexican Spanish, so much more agreeable than the machine-gun Spanish spoken in the mother country. From there onto the broad and drawn Rio-de-la-Plata Spanish spoken in Argentina and Uruguay, thanks again to our friends Freddy and Ana-Lia and Vicky and their families, who also were incredible generous with their time and hospitality in the late 1980s. We first saw baroque imperial Spanish architectural styles in Mexico, Buenos Aires, and many places in between, and have had multiple déjà vu’s now that we have seen the originals in Spain, nearly 30 years later.

Brazilian was no different. Learned in 1988 during a 5-month stage in Campinas/Sao Paolo and thanks to our friend Kesia and her family; not forgotten thanks to LSE friends Francisco Ferreira and Grita Loebsack. But now sitting deep at the back of the brain and struggling to work itself free below all the Italian and Spanish … You will get a sense of how beautiful and melodic this language is, courtesy of the attached marvelous song from one of my favourite Brazilian singers, Elis Regina.

Running out of words here, so will just let some photos speak to our admiration for Sevilla, to me the most splendid, regal and glorious city in Spain.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRqI5R6L7ow

PS: The accelerator cable just broke. We will crawl the 286km to Porto tomorrow praying it does not give up all functionality. So much for praising the day before the evening ...