United States or United Kingdom ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"Born in Andalusia, lived in Cadiz, plenty of money, a beautiful home," Carmen's eyes drooped, and her face flushed slightly "no brothers or sisters visits to Madrid on political business you at school then the going of your mother, and you at home at the head of the house. So much on the young shoulders, the kitchen, the parlour, the market, the shop, society and so on.
Most of the bulls selected are bred at Utrera, in Andalusia, about twenty miles from Seville, and are splendid animals. All are not, however, fit for the ring, the more ferocious ones only being selected. The Plaza is usually under the superintendence of a society of nobles and gentlemen, called Maestanzas, the king being styled "Hermano Major," or elder brother of the Guild.
To many people it will seem surprising to learn that the next evidence of deep broad interest in knowledge is to be found in the next century in the distant west of Europe, in the Spanish Peninsula. It is a long step from the semi-barbaric splendor of the Gothic court at Verona, to the bishop's palace in Seville in Andalusia.
The ponderous three-deckers of Biscay were notoriously the dullest sailers ever known, nor were the fettered slaves who rowed the great galleys of Portugal or of Andalusia very brisk in their movements; and yet the King might have found time to marshal his ideas and his squadrons, and the Armada had leisure to circumnavigate the globe and invade England afterwards, if a succession of John Rogerses could have entertained his Highness with compliments while the preparations were making.
They sought the authorisation of the King and towards the calends of December, 1499, they left port. Now Palos is on the western coast of Spain, situated about seventy-two miles distant from Cadiz and sixty-four miles from Seville in Andalusia, and all the inhabitants without exception are seafaring people, exclusively occupied in navigation.
Where these now rose and sank with the long ground-swell of the plains in our own West, a thin gray stubble covered them from the feeble culture which leaves Spain, for all their extent in both the Castiles, in Estremadura, in Andalusia, still without bread enough to feed herself, and obliges her to import alien wheat.
In the first year of the operation of the Inquisition, 1481, two thousand victims were burnt in Andalusia; besides these, many thousands were dug up from their graves and burnt; seventeen thousand were fined or imprisoned for life. Whoever of the persecuted race could flee, escaped for his life.
There is nothing remarkable in the architecture of the convent; part of it is Gothic, but the edifice, having been frequently repaired, and being whitewashed, according to a universal custom in Andalusia, inherited from the Moors, has not that venerable aspect which might be expected from its antiquity.
Every urchin in Andalusia knows the names of the most prominent champions and can tell you their merits. The bull-fight is the national spectacle; it excites Spaniards as nothing else can, and the death of a famous torero is more tragic than the loss of a colony. Seville looks upon itself as the very home and centre of the art.
The storms of many kinds which shook the first fifteen years of the nineteenth century spent their force before they reached those cliffs at so short a distance from the coast of Andalusia.
Word Of The Day