I Crashed a Wedding in Seville. Sorry, Curiosity Got the Better of Me.

–

I have so much to write about Spain and its aura, but where can I really begin? I’ve already written about an Indian wedding in the heart of Sitges, and a child who was a cutter at the Mirador de San Nicolás in Granada. I also wrote about how Spaniards camp every weekend to get away from the city’s grind and how beautiful and Instagram worthy the town of Frigiliana is.

The worlds inhabited by Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí, and Federico García Lorca and their muses, had me wonder if this must be the most beautiful place on earth, as I traveled for sixteen days on a road trip across the length and breadth of Andalusia.

But who knew that a 300-feet walk in downtown Seville (pronounced in Spanish as se-bee-yya) would be the one memory to stay in my head forever?

We’d just finished watching the flamenco show at Casa de la Memoria, and I was still amusing over the rhythmic heel-tapping that the performers had delivered for an hour, when we wandered outside, half reluctantly that the show was over.

Seville is an artist’s muse, as you will see in these pictures. I wasn’t the one to buy the art pieces, but I hoped someone else surely would. How else will these artists eat??

Our high schooler was telling us how his professor had been to Barcelona the past week and was ranting about Americans lining up at Popeyes and making the lines longer than the Sagrada Familia (a famous gothic church) queue. I also noticed that, unlike in Barcelona, where Glovo delivery drivers on their mopeds, mostly brown young men, were everywhere, were no where to be seen here.

As we walked along the Plaza del Salvador, looking at flyers stuck to lamp posts and decor hanging outside stores, we came upon a crowd. I looked up to see a breathtaking peach-colored church towering over the plaza. The Divine Salvador Church or Iglesia Colegial del Divino Salvador, as I later found out it was called, has a grand Baroque facade with ornate sculptures and pilasters.

I had to know what was going on. When I asked a woman peering into the church from the street, she told us it was a wedding and that everyone was waiting for the bride and groom to arrive outside.

As soon as I heard that, I slowly started tiptoeing into the church, even as I could hear my family shouting their disapproval.

Inside, the tall and vast temple, with intricate altarpieces gleaming with gold, framed the magnificent ceremony unfolding in front of my eyes.

I was there for two minutes, but fully invested in the joy of the celebration. Before anyone could ask me who I was, I slipped back outside and waited along with my family to see what would happen next.

The couple walked outside, rose petals were thrown into the air and people toasted.

Sorry, not so sorry for crashing the wedding, because it would’ve been be a magnificent mistake I would have regretted not making.

For the rest of the night, I felt my feet skip lightly on the cobbled streets until I finally sat down in the metro train to calm the thunder in my heart.

Places Visited

Casa de la Memoria Centro Cultural Flamenco, C. Cuna, 6, Casco Antiguo, 41004 Sevilla, Spain
The show “Tarde de Flamenco” at Casa de la Memoria lasts approximately one hour and includes a cast of four artists: a bailaora (dancer), a bailaor (dancer), a cantaor (singer), and a guitarist. Find out more HERE.

Divine Salvador Church – Iglesia Colegial del Divino Salvador, Pl. del Salvador, 3, Casco Antiguo, 41004 Sevilla, Spain

– 0 –