Stage El Cuervo de Sevilla - Las Cabezas de San Juan

The stage between El Cuervo de Sevilla and Las Cabezas de San Juan covers some twenty-nine kilometres along the eastern edge of the Guadalquivir marshes. It is a day of almost unbroken flatness, with heights in its central section barely above sea level, and it ends with the only notable climb of the day. Anyone preferring to spread the effort can break it at Lebrija, at around the ninth kilometre.

Leaving El Cuervo, the path abandons the line of the old national road and takes compacted earth farm tracks that descend gently towards the marsh. The opening landscape is a mosaic of cereal, sunflower and cotton, without trees and with very open views.

The way then climbs to the rise on which Lebrija stands, its outline dominated by the baroque tower of Santa María de la Oliva and visible from well before the arrival. The town, birthplace of the humanist Antonio de Nebrija, preserves the remains of its castle and a quarter of narrow whitewashed streets, and is the best place for a long stop.

After Lebrija the route returns to the alluvial plain and faces its most monotonous stretch: a chequerboard of large irrigated fields crossed by channels and dead-straight service tracks, with the odd isolated farmstead and lines of eucalyptus as the only landmarks. In winter the area can flood, and in summer the glare of the sun off the bare ground is exhausting.

The last kilometres climb the hill crowned by Las Cabezas de San Juan, a short but sustained ascent repaid with wide views over the countryside and the marshes. The town is tied to a decisive episode in Spanish history: it was here that General Riego proclaimed the Constitution of 1812, in the 1820 pronouncement that opened the Liberal Triennium. The Gothic-Mudéjar church of San Juan Bautista and the remains of the castle complete its monumental ensemble.