Game of Thrones Season 7: New info about filming in Zumaia and Santiponce

Image credit: Mikel González. License: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Spain license. (This image has been cropped.)

The Game of Thrones production is still preparing to shoot material in Spain. Last week, we reported on what it’s going to film in the village of Malpartida, in the province of Cáceres. Now, Spanish-language fansite Los Siete Reinos brings us information about what’s happening in two other filming locations: the village of Zumaia and the city of Santiponce.

WARNING: MILD SPOILERS FOLLOW

First, let’s stop by Zumaia. Here, the show will be filming near Itzurun Beach, seen above. According to LSR, HBO is hiring people to row large paddle boats called drifters. The intention is to shoot material at sea, something the show has never done before.

True, Game of Thrones has filmed scenes at sea before. But it’s always done that in controlled circumstances, with boats built on sets and water digitally inserted afterward. Filming at sea is very tricky—if HBO is going to the logistical trouble of doing it, we can assume that Season 7 will have some important scenes set on the open water. With Daenerys’ fleet on its way to Westeros, not to mention Euron’s thousand ships, it all fits.

ModExpoR Internacional, the company that hires extras for HBO in Spain, has said that’ll it’ll post new information about what it’s looking for for this location (and in Bermeo and Barrika) on October 5. Hopefully we’ll learn more soon.

Let’s move on to the city of Santiponce, where the show is scheduled to film in the ancient Roman ruins of Italica.

Italica. Image credit: Diego Delso, Wikimedia Commons, License CC-BY-SA 4.0

According to LSR, the show will not be shooting a battle here, as it previously thought. However, whatever scene is shot here will likely involve dragons. This ties into SPOILERS we reported a month ago: that at some point during Season 7, Daenerys will visit the Dragonpit in King’s Landing. (We don’t know why she’s visiting—she could be a prisoner or she could visit of her own free will.) With that information in place, it’s looking more likely than ever that the ruins of Italica will stand in for the Dragonpit, one of the most important structures in the city.

One final tidbit from LSR: it looks like the production will not, in fact, be returning to film at the Real Alcázar of Seville, which stood in for the Water Gardens of Dorne in Season 5. Reports have gone back and forth on that. Note that the show still filmed scenes at the Water Gardens in Season 6; it just didn’t use the Real Alcázar, so this doesn’t necessarily mean anything about how much of Dorne we’ll see in Season 7.