It was my final night in Seville and I was not ready to give it up.
Still unused to the warmth of a Mediterranean November, I sat outside a cafe in
the narrow streets. The cafes seem to open in bunches around haphazardly
placed plazas, reminding me of the thick cluster of blooms on a lilac branch
crowded by bees; or in the cafes’ case, eager patrons. I was visiting a friend
who lived west of the Guadalquivir, the grey looping river that divides Seville, and she had turned
in for the night, footsore and talked-out in the way that old friends are after
a week of reunion.
I was not tired, however, and had no intention of sleeping
through all my final hours in a city that awakens at 10:00PM. It is tempting to
credit Seville’s nocturnal tendency to the afternoon siesta – three hours
during which Sevillanos close shop, eat light lunches, and give the other
Western financial markets a chance to surpass them – or to a desire to work off
heavy cenas, or dinners, served after 9:30PM. In truth, the city owes its
nightlife to a quixotic merging of culture and architecture: it is built for
people to be together outside. While other European cities tout their pubs,
clubs, or operas, Seville beckons with open-air
bullfighting stadiums, fountains, tiny bars whose flamencos spill outside when
guests join in with castanets in hand, and most uniquely, tributes to Don Juan
Tenorio, legendary womanizer and personification of Spain’s medieval past.
It was to one of these tributes that I was drawn as I left
the café and deliberately lost myself, meandering from plaza to plaza as the
night drew its tendrils closely over the city’s convivial bustle. I came upon a
crowd of young men gathered around one of Don Juan’s effigies that smirked
welcomingly. I couldn’t fully translate the idiom-filled innuendo in the
leader’s boyish voice. Balancing precariously on the statue’s pedestal, he read
aloud a dramatic story of willing seduction and then draped the statue in
multicolored sashes. At he did so, guitars, percussion, and brass instruments
materialized and the crowd broke into song. It rollickingly repeated, ‘Don Juan
Tenorio!’ – ‘TeNOrio!’ came the echo – ‘He loved them and left them, flowering
Sevillanas in full bloom, Don Juan!’
With a rousing shout, the leader leapt down, instructing his
followers to move to the next plaza to find their flowering Sevillanas. When
they had gone, rowdy choruses echoing down the alleys after them, I approached the statue, an eyebrow raised, confronting this monument to
machismo. Roses lay scattered about its base. As I stood, other women who had
been watching came and picked up the roses, laughing and running off in the
direction of the singers. I picked up one myself and ran a fingertip over
places where the rose’s thorns had been meticulously removed, perhaps in an
attempt to convince all flowering Sevillanas of the painlessness of love. I
smiled, an Americana,
and quite unconvinced.
