Promises

Promises should be kept.  I know that and try to keep them, but not always successfully. I wish I could make up for some.

  

In the heart of Seville is a pedestrian square with no special appearance.  It must have a name, but city maps don't show one.  Weekdays it is the most ordinary of semi-business centers.   Nondescript offices surround a plain, undecorated area. A church dominates the north facade.  No benches, no flowered islands, no monument, not even signs or billboards.

One expects, in Spain, never to be out of sight of a floral bed, or decoration, but here is none.  Without the church, this square would be the dullest spot in Seville.

Except on Sunday.

Sunday is for “La Sevillana.” For an hour or two any person or family can reach back four centuries, for free, into the pinnacle of Spain's most romantic period.

It isn't advertised.  No billboards, nothing in the papers, on radio or T.V.  The only setup is that the church clears its staircase and front deck.  This is for the convenience of free bands that alternate during that day. Bands arrange with somebody to show up on some schedule. They must make agreements with some authority some place, because they never play anything but “Sevillana” period pieces that include Flamenco and other three-century-old folkdance pieces.

The square has few, but essential, qualities for “La Sevillana.” They are (1) Size: There is space for hundreds of participants; (2) Protection:  Buildings surround the square, blocking any severe wind; (3) Flat:  It is slightly tilted, but the pavement block surface is smooth.  (4) No stands or benches.  If you enter the square, you are in the midst of the dancers.

Spaniards do almost nothing without sprays of flowers distributed everywhere, on their persons, decorating everything they can reach.  But this square is as plain as cold soup ---  until Sunday. Then it is not the square, but people who turn it into something wonderful.

My first visit began in a desultory manner.  Somebody had told me that a Yankee should not miss “La Sevillana.” I wasn't told what it was, just to be at the square shortly before church let out. When I arrived, all there was to observe were a few people assembling folding chairs on the church veranda.  No signs, no bunting, nothing.

Well, not quite nothing.  Several college age persons were placing some coats in a sort of circle here and there.  A Franco guard leaned sleepily against a street sign.  A priest peered out through  a window. After a time, a few musicians went up the church stairway that faced the square.  The musicians, of disparate ages and garb, some about twenty, some clearly pushing retirement, carried instruments up the stairs.  They warmed up a little; but there was still nothing dramatic. What conversation I could decipher was trivial.

Then a fellow with rather wild hair raised his hands high, held them up for a moment.  Something was about to begin.

I heard a sort of “Ahhh,” behind me.  I turned around. Somehow, silently, the square had filled.  At least a thousand people, folks of every age and description, had melted into the square prepared to dance.  Clusters of teenagers, clusters of adults, all mixed with the very old and very young, had laid out markers with their coats, jackets, handbags, radios, even occasional hats. No one invaded a single claim.  Some people had brought folding chairs; but those turned out to be for older, non dancers.

Some dancers were paired, but most had arrived singly for the dance, pairing up with whomever was hand, and generally re-pairing later. They would find a partner, young or old, decked out or not.  The dance was why they had come.

The largest circles maxed at twelve persons.   Four was the minimum.  Many wore period costumes, but that was obviously optional. Nearly every girl below high school age, though, was elegantly decked out, mostly in the ubiquitous “fandango” style with the great comb that stacks hair high. Costumes overall varied from Twentieth Century to Medieval.

Nearly every adult knew the steps of every tune. I created the "nearly."  As dancers pirouetted in the flowing circles, there was an obvious rule -- you smiled your best smile at every eye you caught.  Since that meant me, too, I quickly felt very Carlovian Spanish.

              

Circles swelled and shrank, as a couple drifted from one circle to another.  (But not me, of course.  They knew not to invite me).  I got big smiles, though, of sympathy mostly.

              

This being Spain, when I held my hands out, palms up, they laughed.  A few volunteered to show me at least some basic steps.  One woman peeled off her elbow length gloves, grabbed my wrists, and towed me into her circle and through some maneuvers that had to have been from the Sevillana years. She didn't mind that I remained a half beat behind each maneuver. The rest of our circle cheered. 

There were no breaks in the music.  How the second band arrived, I didn't see.  I only realized that there were two when a fellow from the first band came down the church steps to join a young woman in a larger circle.

I'd been happily clicking away with my camera for some time when I felt a tug at my elbow.  Turning, there was a nicely dressed man in a Nineteenth Century style dinner suit, a “gentleman,” smiling and pointing to my camera.

“Por favor?” he asked in a soft voice.  He pointed to the girl beside him, whom he had been lovingly teaching.

The girl, at most ten, obviously his granddaughter, as pretty as a ten year old could be, was also delighted that her grandfather would want their picture taken together with her in her  beautiful period costume.

I had them stand together.  They beamed. I shot twice.  He wrote out his address, which I slipped into my camera case.

Sadly, my travels after Seville, to Portugal, more Spain, France, Holland, and London, required much handling of the camera case.  Somewhere, the gentleman's address slipped out.

That charming gentleman has long since departed, and his grandchild is almost surely, now, a grandmother.  I hope they didn't really mind that I did not keep my promise.