Over the principal entrance are three beautifully carved shields: one with the arms of Spain, another with those of the king, and the third with those of the queen. In the construction of the palace, the chief considerations have been comfort and convenience. Every most modern improvements, both scientific and æsthetic, have been employed to attain this end. The furniture is elegant, and harmonises perfectly with the decoration of the rooms; the tapestries, paintings, porcelains, all the objects of art, in fact, which are found there in great profusion, are in the most exquisite taste; while the park by which Miramar is surrounded is probably the best cultivated domain in the possession of the Crown. The telegraph links up the palace with the whole world; and the telephone connects it with the royal palace and the Government Offices at Madrid. At the extremity of the grounds of the Royal residence, which have been built over the road, and continued to the water’s edge, is the private landing-stage which his Majesty always uses in going to and from the Giralda. On most days during the San Sebastian season, the king is to be seen in the Bay, and he is always one of the most interested spectators of the races during the regatta week.
In a little volume of this kind, which is intended as an album and pictorial souvenir of the palaces of which it treats rather than an illustrated handbook, little attention has been given to the cities in which these royal residences are situated, or the country by which they are surrounded. But a few lines may be added here about San Sebastian, which in most respects is different from other Spanish cities, even from the capitals of the other Basque provinces. San Sebastian is kept spotlessly clean, its municipal management is perfect, and its beggars are conspicuous by their absence. The modernity of the town is due to the firing of the place after the siege of 1813, when the only part that escaped was the bit of old town, situated near the little Port des Pêcheurs, under the shadow of Mount Urgull. The broad, even, regular streets of the new town, which is bisected by the handsome Avenida de la Libertad, are flanked by splendid shops and hotels that would do credit to any European city. The whole place wears an aspect of smiling prosperity, and its life during the holiday season is one continuous round of hearty, innocent gaiety. Cricket, it must be admitted, has not yet been naturalised in Spain, and the golfer must cross the border to Biarritz to indulge in his favourite game, but every other sport that the average Englishman affects can be enjoyed here. The bathing from the beach is the best and safest in the world, and the lover of picturesque scenery has a paradise of varied landscapes and sea pieces within walking distance of the town. There is lawn tennis in the new recreation grounds, and pelota matches, at one or other of the courts, are played daily; while, for those who care for bull fighting, there is a corrida every Sunday afternoon during the season.
VI
EL ALCAZAR
SEVILLE
The beautiful Moorish palace of the Alcazar at Seville, unlike the more famous Alhambra of Granada, is still a royal palace, though only occasionally the residence of their Catholic Majesties. The upper floor, containing the royal apartments, is always kept ready for these illustrious tenants, and in consequence is rarely accessible by the tourist and sight-seer. The palace proper is one of a group of buildings known as the Alcazares, which is surrounded by an embattled wall, and includes several open spaces and numerous private dwellings. Immediately inside the wall are two squares called the Patio de las Banderas and Patio de la Monteria. At the far end of the former is the office of the governor of the palace, and to the right of this is an entrance whence a colonnaded passage called the Apeadero leads straight through to the gardens, or, by turning to the right, to the Patio del Leon. On one side this latter square communicates with the Patio de la Monteria; on the other side is the palace of the Alcazar itself. I hope this will make the rather puzzling topography of the place a little more intelligible.
Whether or not the Roman ‘Arx’ stood on this spot, as tradition avers, I cannot pretend to say. But there is no room for doubt that a palace stood here in the days of the Abbadite amirs, and that this building was restored and remodelled by the Almohades. To outward seeming the Alcazar is as Moorish a monument as the Alhambra. In reality, few traces remain of the palace raised by the Moslem rulers of either dynasty, and the present building was mainly the work of the Castilian kings—especially of Pedro the Cruel. But though built under and for a Christian monarch, it is practically certain that the architects were Moors and good Moslems, and that their instructions and intentions were to build a Moorish palace. Historically, you may say, the Alcazar is a Christian work; artistically, Mohammedan.
The actual palace occupies only a small part of the site of the older structures, and incorporates but a few fragments of their fabrics. Since Pedro the Cruel’s day, so many sovereigns have restored, remodelled, and added to the building, that it is far from being homogeneous, though we can hardly agree with Contreras that it is ‘far from being a monument of Oriental art.’
Pedro built more than one palace, or, more correctly, two or three wings of the same palace, in this enclosure. Traces of his Stucco Palace (Palacio del Yeso) remain. Pedro looms very large in the history of Seville. He plays the same part here as Harûn-al-Rashid in the story of Bagdad. He was fond of the Moors, and affected their costumes and customs. He also favoured the Jews, and was alleged by his enemies to be the changeling child of a Jewess. His treasurer and trusted adviser was an Israelite named Simuel Ben Levi. He served the king long and faithfully, till one day it was whispered that half the wealth that should fill the royal coffers had been diverted into his own. Ben Levi was seized without warning and placed on the rack, whereupon he expired, not of pain, but of sheer indignation. Under his house—so the story goes—was found a cavern in which were three piles of gold and silver, twice as high as a man. Pedro on beholding these was much affected. ‘Had Simuel surrendered a third of the least of these piles,’ he exclaimed, ‘he should have gone free. Why would he rather die than speak?’
Stories innumerable are told of this king, a good many, no doubt, being pure inventions. There is no reason to question the account of his treatment of Abu Saïd, the Moorish Sultan of Granada. This prince had usurped his throne, and being solicitous of Pedro’s alliance, came to visit him at the Alcazar with a magnificent retinue. The costliest presents were offered to the Castilian king, whose heart, however, was bent on possessing the superb ruby in the regalia of his guest. Before many hours had passed, the Moors were seized in their apartments and stripped of their raiment and valuables. Abu Saïd, ridiculously tricked out, was mounted on a donkey, and with thirty-six of his courtiers, hurried to a field outside the town, where they were bound to posts. A train of horsemen appeared, Don Pedro at their head, and transfixed the helpless men with darts, the king shouting, as he hurled his missiles at his luckless guest: ‘This for the treaty you made me conclude with Aragon! This for the castle you took from me!’ The ruby which had been the cause of the Moor’s death was presented by his murderer to the Black Prince, and now adorns the crown of England.
Nor did Pedro confine his fury to the sterner sex. Doña Urraca Osorio, because her son was concerned in Don Enrique’s uprising, was burned at the stake on the Alameda. Her faithful servant, Leonor Dávalos, seeing that the flames had consumed her mistress’s clothing, threw herself into the pyre to cover her nakedness, and was likewise burnt to ashes. Having conceived a passion for Doña Maria Coronel, the king caused the husband to be executed in the Torre del Oro. The widow, far from yielding to his entreaties and threats, took the veil and destroyed her beauty by means of vitriol. Pedro at once transferred his attentions to her sister, Doña Aldonza, and met with more success. If a chronicler is to be believed, he threw his brother Enrique’s young daughter naked to the lions, like some Christian virgin martyr. The generous (or possibly overfed) brutes refused the proffered prey, and the whimsical tyrant ever afterwards treated the maiden kindly. In memory of her experience, she was known as ‘Leonor de los Leones.’
Crossing the Plaza del Triunfo, which lies between the Cathedral and the old Moorish walls, we enter the Patio de las Banderas, so called either because a flag was hoisted here when the royal family was in residence, or on account of the trophy, composed of the arms of Spain with crossed flags, displayed over one of the arches. Pedro was accustomed to administer justice, tempered with ferocity, after the Oriental fashion, seated on a stone bench in a corner of this square. The surrounding private houses occupy the site of the old Palace of the Almohades, and one of the halls—the Sala de Justicia—is still visible. It is entered from the Patio de la Monteria. Contreras assigns an earlier date to this room even than the advent of Almohades. It is square, and measures nine metres across. The stucco ceiling is adorned with stars and wreaths, and bordered by a painted frieze. The decorations consist chiefly of inscriptions in Cufic characters. The right-angled apertures in the walls were closed either by screens of translucent stucco or by tapestries, ‘which must,’ says Gestoso y Perez, ‘have made the hall appear a miracle of wealth and splendour.’ It was in this hall, often overlooked by visitors, that Don Pedro overheard four judges discussing the division of a bribe they had received. The question was abruptly solved by the division of the disputants’ heads and bodies. Thanks to its isolation, the Sala de Justicia escaped the dreadful ‘restoration’ effected in the middle of the nineteenth century by the Duc de Montpensier. The house No. 3, Patio de las Banderas, formed part, in the opinion of Gestoso y Perez, of the Palacio del Yeso, or Stucco Palace, of Don Pedro.