Fieldwork in Stilettos

I had a plan. I always had a plan. I would follow the city wall and, by virtue of it being a huge, historic, UNESCO-worthy wall, it would lead me back to my new home.

I was 17. It was my first time alone in Europe and my first full day in Sevilla, which might explain why I thought it would be a good idea to take a “little stroll” even though I’d forgotten my map.

Growing up as a second-generation Puerto Rican in a small New Jersey town is a strange thing, especially if you never learned Spanish and don’t know where your curly hair came from. Somewhere though, I latched onto the idea that my heritage was something I could find so I enrolled at a flamenco school that catered to international students.

It took 6 months but eventually I’d saved enough for a flight to Paris, an overnight train to Madrid and an express from the country’s bustling cosmopolitan capital to its mysterious southern counterpart: Andalucía.

I knew better than to call home when I realized, approximately 3 hours into my “little stroll,” that I was lost. The only thing harder than planning my trip had been convincing my parents to let me go and dad had drawn a big red line across my Eurail map, forbidding me to go to Eastern Europe.

I wasn’t in danger of crossing the line but it was getting hot. I was thirsty and I didn’t speak the language. Still, Andalucía was drawing me in, just as it did writers like Bizet and Washington Irving, only I had the advantage of seeing the modern world squashed up against the city’s ancient highlights.
A young father pushed a pram made of white lace. A couple eating tapas at a tiny restaurant on the sidewalk had to stand up and move their table, still full of steaming croquettas de jamon, to let a mini cooper pass down the narrow street.

I had yet to climb the steps to the cathedral’s bell tower or to visit the Real Alcazar gardens. I had yet to hear my first Spanish guitar or see my first authentic flamenco tablao, where the dancers and their defiantly arched backs made you swore you knew exactly what the singer was saying, even though you didn’t speak the same language. But those things were coming.

As a navigational tool, the city’s crumbling wall had failed me—I finally broke down and called my brother who advised me to hail a cab and give the driver my new address—but 13 years later, it still reminds me that when you’re trying to find yourself, you can’t always follow a map.