After the overnight visits to Algeciras and Sanlucar, I had a more leisurely four-night stay in Seville. It’s a city that I liked when Jen and I spent a few days visiting back in 2012. Twelve years ago. Where does the time go?
My hotel was bang in the middle of the old town and so once again parking was an issue. The allocated hotel parking required me to use a tiny car lift to access my spot and so I left it there for the entire four days and just made my way around the city on foot.
Seville still seemed to be celebrating Christmas and New Year, with the Three Kings festivities culminating on the sixth of January now added into the mix. My first game of the visit was a La Liga fixture at Sevilla’s Ramon Sanchez-Pizjuan stadium. It was about an hour’s walk and it took me past a couple of presumably well-known cathedrals. It was a route that had also been selected for a Three Kings parade and so I had to fight my way through the crowds who were waiting to scramble for the sweets thrown by the parades.
Most of those in the procession were in ‘blackface’, a tradition that I thought might well have died out by now. Spain seems slower at adapt to modern sensibilities than, say, the UK, but I expect that they’ll get there eventually.
I’d been lucky with the weather earlier in the day, but as I approached the ground the rain grew heavier. I regretted my choice of seat which, despite costing sixty euros, was in the uncovered Volodizo Fondo, or as Google Translate informs me, the cantilever bottom. It was a decent enough view, along the side and in the lower part of the upper tier, but as the rain became torrential the lack of a roof meant that there was no way I was going to leave the concourse until the teams were ready to kick-off.
Most of the fans around me were in wet weather gear. Some had those plastic ponchos, others had brought in umbrellas. The rain would have been fantastic to play in, but it was less enjoyable for watching. Fortunately, it eased after ten minutes or so, but returned intermittently throughout the evening.
Sevilla didn’t play well at all, and Bilbao went a goal up in the first half to the delight of the away fans behind me to my left. I’d seen a few of them around town earlier in the day, making the most of the holiday. They’d done well to pace themselves for an evening kick-off.
I was surprised at how poor Sevilla were. There was no fight in them, and players often didn’t track back or make tackles that they could have done. They looked like a team in danger of going down.
Bilbao added a second goal close to the end to seal the victory and the Sevilla fans that remained to the end weren’t happy at all. Sergio Ramos took some stick from the stands during his post-match pitch-side interview. It seems that he still hadn’t won over the home fans. Maybe he should have tossed them some sweets.
Tags: Seville, Three Kings Parade
Trail of the Lion King 
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