Within

Within
two hours of landing in Seville, I found myself sitting
in the front row at a flamenco show. I was slightly wary that I’d
bought into one of the city’s biggest tourist clichés, but the
cool, stone walls of the underground concert room, along with the
ice-cold beer in my hand, offered an escape from the oppressive
heat of the July afternoon. The first song began, with a lilting
rhythm sustained by the steady strum of a guitar; punctuated by the
neat clicks of a dancer and the claps of a wailing vocalist. I
settled deeper into my seat, and into the beat.

Duende is a Spanish word which roughly translates as ‘spirit’,
and refers to a physical or emotional reaction triggered by art.
Duende is what gives you chills down your spine; what makes the
hairs stand up on the back of your neck. Thanks to the 20th-century
Andalusian poet and playwright Federico García Lorca, the concept
is traditionally associated with flamenco, and each year visitors
are drawn to Seville in the hope of discovering duende for
themselves.

Many choose to visit during the spring, when the city is steeped
in the sweet scent of orange blossom, and anticipating its two most
important events. Semana Santa (Holy Week) sees thousands line the
streets to catch a glimpse of medieval hooded figures, who process
behind life-sized religious effigies to bring the Easter story
alive. The solemn spectacle is followed two weeks later by the
spirited Feria de Abril (April Fair) a citywide party associated
with much of what we consider to be quintessentially Andalusian.
Think bullfighting, flamenco-dancing, sherry-drinking and girls in
polka-dot dresses riding horsedrawn carriages through cobbled
roads.

But even if you visit in low season, as I did, Seville is
charged with elevated emotion. And indeed, without the festivities
of Semana Santa and Feria taking centre stage, there is more time
to consider the city’s rich and textured past. I spent hours one
morning wandering the former Jewish quarter of Santa Cruz, my pace
slowed by soporific sunlight, and wound up at La Casa de Pilatos.
Adorned with kaleidoscopic azulejos (ceramic tiles) and stucco
engravings, this 16th-century palace is one of the city’s best
examples of Mudéjar architecture from Moorish times, a style
recognised as the meeting point of Spanish and Islamic aesthetics.
Elsewhere, Roman ruins point to the city’s earliest settlement, the
Arenal neighbourhood speaks of its former colonial glory and
Triana, a site of pottery production since the Roman era, was until
the 20^th century home to Seville’s gitano (gypsy)
community. (Though gypsies were persecuted for centuries, driven
into a submerged underclass from which they are still emerging,
they are largely credited with developing the very Spanish art of
flamenco.)

Today, different cultures are still encouraging Seville to
modulate its traditional flamenco beat. Intense exposure to tourism
has resulted in a steady stream of cosmopolitan ideas flowing
through the city, and many of the young people I spoke to were
excited to share the more outward-facing side of Seville. A place
of drawn-out lunches and late-night dinners, the food scene here
has in particular benefitted from an increasingly international
clientele, with restaurants like conTenedor and No Lugar
experimenting with on-trend aesthetics and the concept of slow
food. The Alameda de Hércules area, which until 15 years ago was a
seedy neighbourhood favoured by prostitutes and drug dealers, is
today a lively (and quite beautiful) spot lined with tapas bars and
clubs.

But the beat of Seville is not in danger of changing beyond
recognition. At the gallery and concept store Delimbo, a hip-hop
artist known locally as jotandjota tells me: “People in Seville
tend to really fight for their own culture.” The sentiment is
shared by 28-year-old designer Luna Medina, who recently returned
to live in her native city after spending eight years in Paris and
New York. She says: “You can be so much more spontaneous in
Seville. Life here is another rhythm completely.” And it is
certainly a rhythm worth fighting for.