Spring in Santa Cruz

For the stroller enraptured by the intoxicating aroma of the azahar1 in the pearled
and crimson environment of the old and narrow alleys of “Santa Cruz,” time stops and
the imagination flows, ebbing into a world of pure sensation. The magic of the guitars
with their moaning arpeggios that convey the tragic-comic sense of life of the people of
Sevilla does the rest.

Santa Cruz is a quarter situated in the heart of Sevilla, a city of more than one
million souls, a cross-roads of civilisations and cultures that strives to step onto the train
of progress as the capital of Andalucía, the southernmost region of Spain. Santa Cruz is
one of the oldest quarters of the city, a swarm of little streets and alleys, now and again
slightly widened by small squares, where the life bursts out in talk and trade. Once the
habitat of the most popular layers of society, Santa Cruz is today home to artists and well-
to-do young professionals. Nevertheless, there are still people who resist the rapid
advance of money and real estate development. The architecture of its houses is
reminiscent of the Middle-Eastern pattern of a central courtyard, or patio, toward which
galleries of windows converge, central to the life of the house’s inhabitants. Antiques,
crafts, taverns and inns, form the landscape of the community’s trade. In every corner of
this little redoubt, the mixed heritage of eight centuries of Jewish-Christian-Arab
community reveals itself in a unique way. White walls, bright red geraniums gracing the
grilled windows, narrow alleys that protect against the unbearable inclemency of the
summer heat, transport the stroller into ancient times where the whispers of lovers were
the only music to be heard.

The day in Santa Cruz is very different from its nights, if not less exciting. During
the day, the alleys of Santa Cruz witness Japanese, Germans and other tourists, wandering
with their cameras… but the night belongs to the citizens of Sevilla.

The cool spring morning surprises Sevilla, only eager to give way to a hesitant sun
which ventures its steps into the Callejón del Agua (alley of the water), where silence is
only broken by the murmur of water, from a fountain concealed by the stonewall that
guards the Reales Alcázares2 and its beautiful gardens. Venturing a little farther, the
Juderías, once home to the Jews who peopled this part of Sevilla, whose walls still rumble

1 Orange-tree flower
García-Orrico–Spring in Santa Cruz, Sevilla–Page No. 2

of those prayers and persecution that conformed their future, and where now antiques’
shops welcome experts and amateurs alike.

A cold beer and a tapa de jamón serrano3 fill the first break in the working day of
most sevillanos, who very often replace their meals by several tapas. In the Plaza de los
Venerables, a little square that receives its name from an old convent turned into a
museum that features Easter celebrations in Sevilla, there is a tavern that gathers locals
and foreigners alike, the mesón de los jamones, and welcomes its visitors under a curtain of
jamones serranos that hang from the ceiling.

“Life went slow, one could talk to his friends, events were easy to understand,
nobody was in a hurry,” says an old man recalling the past as he sits in the late afternoon
sun at one of the tables outside the Hostal del Laurel, once home to Miguel de Cervantes.
Bells toll and he tells us he has to leave to meet his wife at the cathedral gate to go to his
mother-in-law’s for dinner. The next stop for tapas is Las Teresas, another tavern in a
narrow alley, where students talk about the next holidays after their exams are over,
surrounded by mosaics and ironworks.

Once the sun disappears, the sevillanos leave their homes and join the spring
evening, and wander along the alleys.

"Pandite nunc Helicona, Deae, et cantus movete,"4 said Jose Blanco White, a British-
Spanish writer, paraphrasing Virgil, as he arrived in Sevilla in 1806. And indeed, the silence
of the alleys is broken by the magic of the mixture of the azahar and the flamenco guitars in
the Plaza de doña Elvira, where stone benches, geraniums and a finely crafted iron cross meet
the furtive glances of the plaza’s inhabitants and by-passers in the late hours of the evening.
Here, courting and provocation show the timid steps of a group of teenagers who,
intoxicated by dreams, beer and the sweetness of the azahar, mix with the night in ritual
dancing, at the rhythm of a sevillana that shatters the silence; one of many types of flamenco,
the sevillana is danced in four steps reminiscent of the steps in courting --perceiving,

2 Arab-built royal palace

3 small portion of food; Jamón –ham–serrano refers to the procedure of drying the pork leg in the cold, bathed
in salt, in the mountains, especially famous is the one from Jabugo, town of the South West of Spain
4 Goddesses! Open Mount Helicon and inspire canticles (Helicon was home to the muses). Eneid, Book VII.
García-Orrico–Spring in Santa Cruz, Sevilla–Page No. 3

meeting, flirting, loving.

Before the night is over, the Mesón de la Gitanilla, a former inn, now small tavern
hidden in a corner where Miguel de Cervantes found inspiration for his short exemplary
homonymous novel, is filled with the jabbering of a group of tunos wearing the light-blue
beca of the School of Architecture of the University of Sevilla. A four century old
university life institution, the tuna gathers male students to serenade their female
counterparts along the night in what is known as a rondalla, dressed as in the 16th century,
the colour of the beca (wide band across their chest) indicates the school to which they
belong, yellow for medicine, red for Law, … This group of good-looking young men,
dressed in their flamboyant outfits, with as many colourful ribbons hanging of their capes
as broken hearts left behind, inject with their guitars and mandolins a new atmosphere
into the warm spring night. Songs of courtship, unrequited love, reminiscent of the
Sevilla of Cervantes fill the air. Mixed-drinks and Latin American melodies will carry us
through the night.

Uncertain of its future, Santa Cruz lives the present. Wine and chats fill empty
spaces, generally until early hours of the morning. Gradually, as dawn breaks, the streets
of Santa Cruz feel the coolness of the morning and the humidity of the Guadalquivir
River. The romance of this night that belongs more to broad and brimmed soft hats,
cloaks and daggers, ends with the daylight that brings the smell of new bread, the view of
business-like suits, of jeans and cameras.

Written in 1997, in New York, by Débora