Have you ever thrown a party, and nobody came? Bet you didn’t do it to the extent that Seville did. But the story starts a few hundred years ago, way back around 1492 when the Spanish kings sent Christopher Columbus out to discover a new way to India, and ran into America. At the time, Spain and Portugal were engaged in a fierce rivalry to claim every piece of the ‘non-Christian’ world, especially in South America, and they were fighting each other, as well as the peoples they were overrunning.
Well, the Pope thought it unseemly that two catholic nations were fighting each other, got them together in Spain in 1494, and signed the Treaty of Tordesillas which neatly divided the ‘New World’ of the Americas between the two superpowers by drawing a north-to-south line of demarcation in the Atlantic Ocean. All lands east of that line were claimed by Portugal (which is why Brazil speaks Portuguese). All lands west of that line were claimed by Spain. Everybody was happy – except the countries being conquered, of course, but that didn’t matter much.
A golden age of development commenced in Seville, due to its being the only port awarded the royal monopoly for trade with the growing Spanish colonies in the Americas and the influx of riches which came with that. Since only sailing ships leaving from and returning to the inland port of Seville could engage in trade with the Spanish Americas, merchants from Europe and other trade centres needed to go to Seville to acquire New World trade goods, and Seville flourished.
Fast forward some 500 years, and Spain had grown up enough to realise that there was some residual resentment to them amongst countries in the Americas, and so they decided to put on a huge shindig to prove to the rest of the countries that they were just misunderstood, and were really a bunch of nice, cuddly guys. Especially as they were also trying to repair their reputation after the recent ‘Spanish Flu’ which infected around one third of the world and killed about 22 million people. They spent 19 years planning the party for Seville. 19 years! They built hotels and other buildings, created public transport, widened roads, installed infrastructure. It was all going to come together in the Ibero-American Exposition of 1929 – a world fair to be held from 9 May 1929 until 21 June 1930.
18 countries from the Americas had pavilions built for them – not temporary ones like contemporary exhibitions – but permanent, grand buildings that were intended later to become the country’s consulates. Huge hotels, large parks. An exact replica of Columbus’s ship the ‘Santa Maria’ complete with a costumed crew, floated on the Guadalquivir River.
But then, disaster struck. In 1929 Wall Street crashed, and the Great Depression struck. Nobody came! It was one huge white elephant.
However, it was the start of Seville being an international city as we know it today, one which attracts visitors from all over the world, and much of the infrastructure and many of the exhibition buildings form the nucleus of this amazing city.
Today we did a walking tour around the city, in the areas transformed by the exhibition. The Plaza de Espana (the Spanish pavilion for the exhibition, with halls for each of the provinces) was the centrepiece. We also saw the muslim mosque converted into a cathedral, with its famous minaret known as the Giralda, the city bull ring, the city hall, the old wall, the Golden Tower, and pillars from the roman times.
Everywhere you looked there were amazing buildings, and pictures are hard pressed to do it justice.
Eventually, fairly worn out, we walked all the way back to the apartment and had paella for tea.