Hola internet! If you’ve been wondering where I’ve been the last couple weeks, the answer is at my desk doing homework. Seriously. I guess they call it study abroad for a reason and I’m rather miffed. I didn’t come to Spain to be stressed out in school all the time, doing six-eight page research papers and exams for every class.
All whining aside, there is a pretty neat thing going on in Seville this week, and I figured you might want to hear about it, or at least look at the pretty pictures.
In addition to Semana Santa (read my blog post about it!), Seville is also famous for feria de abril, which the English version of Wikipedia calls Seville Fair. Basically, it is a week long party. Spanish people like to party. And they like to take naps.
So where did it come from? Well back in 1847, the fair was a livestock fair organized by a Basque guy, a Catalonian guy (those are both parts of northern Spain) and Queen Isabel II. In true Spanish fashion, a simple livestock fair turned into a grand event of merrymaking, dancing, dressing to impress, and of course eating and drinking. After a few years, people weren’t interested in buying cattle at the fair anymore, so now it is just a week long party. The fair is always held about two weeks after Easter, so this year it takes place in May because Easter was so late.
What do people wear to this grand event?
Well, you’re safe with a coat and tie if you’re a man, and a fancy dress if you’re a woman, but traditional outfits are also really popular.
Men wear the traditional short jacket, tight trousers, boots, and fancy hats called cordobés.
Women are decked out in trajes de flamenca– flamenco style dresses (that can easily cost over €500).
So basically, a small city of casetas (literally little houses-I can best describe them as tents) is constructed for a week, in a part of the city called Los Remedios. The streets of this temporary little city are named after famous bullfighters (during my time here, I’ve noticed that the most famous and wealthy are either fútbol players or bullfighters). It’s a point of pride to have a caseta to go to-they are invitation only! A lot of people have casetas with their churches or companies, but some families own their own. There are some free casetas, of course, but you really want to get invited to a private one because that means you’ve either got money or you know people who do.
The first night, midnight between Monday and Tuesday, is called the alumbrado (or alumbrao, if you are feeling particularly Andalusian). This is when they turn on all of the lights and it is quite an event. Everyone stands at the gate, or puerta, to watch. There are like a million lights at the fair (scientific calculation, of course), so you can kind of imagine the excitement when they all go on at once.
The Before.
The During.
And the After. (Commence cheers of “¡Olé!”).
They also eat fried fish for dinner this day. Don’t ask me why, that’s just the tradition. Right after the lights go on, and every night for the next week, it’s a wild party until the sun comes up. On Sunday night, the fiesta literally goes out with a bang as there is a fireworks show at midnight that signals the end of feria until next year.
So, in true Spanish fashion, the real party doesn’t begin until about midnight, when all the young people invade the temporary city. Everyone is drinking rebujito, the less strong version (read cheap) of the ever popular feria drink manzanilla. I mean it. Every person you see under the age of 40 has a clear plastic cup (Spanish people are too classy for red solo cups of course) full of fino, (Spanish white wine made in Jerez) and Seven Up (or Sprite). Classy, right? It’s good. Now, the people with lots of money drink Manzanilla. I don’t really know what it is except it’s fancy, strong, and Wikipedia says it’s both wine and sherry? My researching skills are lacking. All I know is that my host grandpa gave me a glass of it at lunch the other day and then I was late for my afternoon class because I took too long of a siesta (let’s chalk it up to the fact that I stayed up too late finishing a paper the night before).
There are also carnival rides that are put up for the week, but I didn’t spend too much time looking at them because I’m a poor college student at the end of an pricey semester spent in Europe and I heard they were expensive.
Today I went and wandered around the feria by myself during the day (one thing I’ve learned through my study abroad experience is I like to wander) and took pictures. Everyone is so well dressed and so happy at feria! And the horses were better dressed than I was (only slightly joking). It’s a big deal to take a ride in the horse drawn carriages with the drivers dressed up in traditional outfits. Here, check out some of my pictures from this afternoon (I really got a kick out of all the horses)!.
I like to call this one “Broccoli”.
A sight to see both during the day and night is the dancing. Sevillanos dance the Sevillana, a type of flamenco which is of course cooler because it is from Seville. There are four different dances and people do them over and over again, young and old, fat and thin, dressed in traditional clothes or not. It’s very cool to see, and everyone knows how to do it.
(Me with my moviestar-like friends)
I experienced a night out at feria on Wednesday, and boy was it something. My friends and I went to several casetas, and when our Spanish friends found out that I had the Sevillana dance class (even though we all know what a disaster that was), I was forced to dance. It turns out, it’s a little easier if you have a partner who knows to dance. But still, I’m never doing it again. I don’t dance. The streets stayed packed even until we headed home at 7:30 in the morning. Feria is quite an event.
Sam Goes to Spain 