The flamenco guitar renders sweet, tender tones. The dancer’s elegant hands sculpt origami silhouettes as her arms snake above her arched back. No ersatz smile, eyes half closed, she concentrates. Stomp. Her feet break out in a syncopated rap-tat-tap. Other dancers clap a counter rhythm. The singer’s voice erupts, husky with anguish. Surging-slowing, surging-slowing, the emotion builds. Hands-feet-skirts fly at blur speed. Olé! Olé! we whoop. With a fierce cry, the lament breaks, the passion’s released. Now sensuous and defiant, our dancer proclaims her power.

Ah, flamenco. Like Seville herself, it’s a paella rich with cultures: the Moor, the Jew, the indigenous Iberian and, of course, the Gypsy. In flamenco’s hand work, I detect India—from whence the Gypsies came—and in its footwork, Israel’s horah. Its lyrics, the Gypsies’ lament, resounds with the Muezzin’s Call to Prayer. In Seville, the Cathedral’s Renaissance belfry (La Giralda) sits atop a Moorish minaret. Roman walls stand around being road dividers. The old Jewish quarter, Barrio de Santa Cruz, is Seville’s captivating core, but all the Jews fled—along with the Arabs and Gypsies—when Ferdinand and Isabella began incinerating those who would not convert to their virulent Christianity. Seville and its flamenco stews with many cultures and is spiced with their suffering.

We, on the other hand, are not suffering, not even a whit. Early this morning, luxe and snug in our Seabourn Pride, we entered the river Guadalquivir following the very path Columbus took in 1493 to announce he’d found a new route to the Indies. Sixteen days ago, we’d set sail from those very Indies—Florida to be exact.

This morning we sailed with the incoming tide through flat, cypress-studded farmland where white-walled and terracotta-roofed villages à la Don Quixote alternated with block-long, concrete farm buildings à la Iowa. Swifts swooped, larks larked and the orange blossom's sweet scent merged with the river’s overripe odor.

A modern drawbridge rises and we catch our first glimpse of Seville. Straight ahead, La Giralda, delicate and bold, stands above all else. In inspired urban zoning, nothing in Seville—well, almost nothing—is built taller than La Giralda. To our right, the Maria Luisa Park’s leafy hummocks are pierced by Plaza de Espana’s towers. The ill-timed Iberian-American Exhibition opened there just in time for the 1929 stock market crash. Ahead, by the river, the Tower of Gold, a twelve-sided, thirteenth-century turret completed the Moors’ defenses which held until the fifteenth-century Christian reconquest.

Beyond the Tower, the river swings to the left where Le Tirana, the once-Gypsy neighborhood, rests in the bend. By night, flamenco flourishes in her bars. By day, ceramic workshops fire azulejos, traditional Andalusian tiles in jubilant blues and lusty golds.

Across the river, with a splash of a fountain and a whiff of mimosa, Barrio de Santa Cruz casts its spell. Cobbled streets too narrow for cars hide balconies flaunting fuchsia-colored bougainvillea. Sidewalk cafes conceal tempting sweet-somethings and small hidden squares invite the whisperings of sweet-nothings.

Seabourn thinks life should be filled with such happy surprises, and so invited all to an "Exclusively Seabourn" occasion, the flamenco performance at the Hotel Alfonso XIII. In the Royal Salon, under four-tiered crystal chandeliers and carved ceilings, we nibbled dainty hors d’oeuvres and sipped champagne. The hotel, built in the late twenties for the visitors expected for the fair that didn’t, is now faring quite well as the lap of Sevillian luxury.

On our way to Alfonso XIII, Seabourn surprised us with a private tour of Palacio de Lebrija. It felt like wandering around the palace of a rich aunt’s old friend. That is if you happen to have a rich aunt with friends like La Condesa de Lebrija. La Condesa, widowed in her early twenties, took her love of the arts and architecture, her wits and her fortune and proceeded to save Andalusia’s patrimony. She got started in the 1920’s rescuing a near-perfect mosaic from the Roman ruins of nearby Itálica. The area’s peasants knew La Condesa was the woman to call if their plows ran into some old Roman urn or column. She paid for the excavations, bought the antiquities and incorporated them into her palace. Tile by tile, the Condesa supervised a mosaic’s move. One, depicting the Greek god Pan, is now the floor in the central courtyard floor.

Pan is now surrounded by intricately carved Moorish arches on the palace’s ground floor—its summer floor. The walls of the summer dining room are covered with the Andalusian azulejos La Condesa rescued from a 16th century convent.

Upstairs, in the winter quarters, La Condesa’s museum-quality travel mementos furnish Spanish, Arab and Chinese sitting rooms. Her chapel has an adjacent bedroom for visiting Bishops. Her porcelain plate collection decorates the winter dining room. Peeking inside a gold leafed reliquary, I unearth not-so-sacred VCR tapes.

At evening’s end, we make our way back along Paseo de las Delicias, the delicious palm-lined river walk, to our own floating palace. Intoxicated with Seville and still tapping out flamenco rhythms, I return to my suite and discover a surprise midnight snack from the chef. Olé…Olé…I sigh contentedly.

Kate Crawford      November 2002

LINKS WITH ATTITUDE

Seabourn’s own web site.

Palacio de Lebrija has a good web site.