La Feria de Abril de Sevilla

Saturday, May 10th

On Friday night, I made my way to Sevilla on the bus. Once there, Lucia's mom picked me up and we watched some of the footage from Feria on the news, then it was off to bed. On Saturday morning, I slept in and relaxed. Then, Carmen, Lucia's sister, and I got ready for Feria. I've talked a few times about Feria now, but I haven't really told you what it is, so I guess I should do that. La Feria de Abril de Sevilla (Seville's April Fair) is a week-long fair that goes on in Sevilla. There are actually fairs like this all throughout Spain, but the one in Seville is the most popular. It started in 1846 and was first a livestock fair to sell and trade livestock. At Feria 1847, it was already starting to transform into the fair it is today with 19 casetas. Casetas are small tents that are temporarily set up for the fair. Families, friends, businesses, political parties, etc. purchase a tent and each tent serves as a mini restaurant/flamenco bar. It is pretty cool actually. Most of the casetas are private; however, there are some public ones, but since I was with some true sevillanas, I was able to get into the private ones. Just to give you an idea of how big Feria is, there were 1040 casetas this year.

Casetas

Inside of a caseta

Also, the decorations of a caseta are pretty important, since there is a contest for decorations. Most people choose to hang vintage posters from Ferias in the past because the poster for Feria is a pretty big deal, too. I would say that Feria is just like a carnival/flamenco fiesta. Anyway, Carmen and I got all dolled up and then went to the fair during the day. It was so warm out, about 95 degrees, so I'm glad I had a fan to go along with my flamenco dress. I was going to wear the flamenco skirt that I bought in Córdoba, but Lucía's mom told me I wasn't allowed to because it was a skirt for flamenco classes and for tourists, so it didn't go along with the traditional flamenco wear. So I wore one of Carmen's dresses. Luckily, the shawl (mantón) is something typical that is worn with a flamenco dress, so I wore one to hid the fact that they dress wasn't zipped all of the way in the back. Haha, the cat is out of the bag now..shhh, don't tell anyone. It was super unnoticeable though, especially with the shawl.

Carmen and I in front of the portada

When we got to the fair, we went to a caseta and ate lunch. I just had a chicken kabob and some chips. We sat in the tent for a little bit and watched some little kids dance flamenco. The little girls in their dresses were so adorable. Then, we walked around for a little bit. We saw the portada. The portada is the main entrance to Feria and, again, there is a contest for the design of the portada because the design changes every year. This year's winner was Gregorio Esteban Pérez and his design was inspired by water kiosks that were built in the 19th century because of a problem with the drinking water supply. So people would go to these kiosks to get drinkable water. The portada is 41 meters (134.5 ft) tall, has 24,000 lightbulbs (try making a Christmas tree with that many lights, Mom), took about 15,500 hours to construct, and cost about 500,000 euros. It's pretty impressive. I'll talk about it more a little bit later, but here's a picture for now.

Inspiration for the portada, an old water kiosk

After seeing the portada, we walked around a little more and watched the horse and carriages go by. These are a big deal, too. Pretty much everything I say in this blog is a big deal because they are the things that make the Feria de Sevilla the Feria de Sevilla. Anyway, I told you I got all dolled up in the traditional dress and most women at Feria do the same; however, the men don't really wear the traditional dress. Only the men who are riding horses or driving the horse-drawn carriages wear the male flamenco suit. Anyway, these horse carriage rides go on everyday from noon to 8 p.m. and you can take on one of the 700 (maximum) carriages through the fairgrounds. It's interesting, on the fair website they go into extreme detail about how the drivers and carriages are licensed and registered, the horses have the proper shots, how donkeys are prohibited (ha.), etc.

Anyway, then we made our way to La Calle del Infierno, which is the carnival ride section. I'm pretty sure this section is called "The Street of Hell" because of the screams that come from all the people riding the rides. We rode the noria (ferris wheel) and I got some good views of the fair from the top. :)

Feria from the ferris wheel 

After this, we went back to a tent and just relaxed and read through the information of the feria that we got, so pretty much all of the information that I am sharing with you now. So if I say something incorrect, it's because the brochure that I was given was wrong or because I translated it incorrectly.

Anyway, after awhile of sitting in the heat, we decided to make our way back to the bus (which was free..that's cool) to go home. Of course, I had to stop at a stand and get ice cream though. It just complemented the heat really well. When we got home, I took off the dress for a little bit and just relaxed. We chilled and watched t.v. and then, at night, I got back in my dress and went back to Feria to get the full experience. This time, I went with Lucia's mom. It was cool to see all the lights of the fair. We hung out at a caseta briefly with her Lucia's grandparents and their friends, then we went to a section of the fair where gitanas (gypsies) make buñoles, which are like churros/donuts.

Then, we went back to hang out in a caseta. We ate dinner which consisted of tortilla española, cheese, and we shared some rebujito and manzanilla, which are alcoholic beverages. It was funny because Lucía's mom was talking to me about the rebujito and how it is just wine mixed with soda. She said people started mixing it because they were getting too drunk too fast, so they backed off on the alcohol, which I like. That brings me to my point that I liked Feria more than Carnaval de Cadíz because Feria seemed to have more culture, whereas Carnaval was just a huge drinking fest. While I'm talking about culture...here is a picture of Lucia's mom and her friend dancing. :)

We just hung out for awhile and the people I was with sang and played the castañuelas. Those are really hard to play by the way. I actually didn't see a lot of dancing because the tents we were in were almost empty. Even Lucia's mom and sister said that the fair was pretty deserted. It's because the sevillanos spend all week at the fair so then on the weekend, they go to the beach and the people at the fair are mostly tourists, so not a lot of dancing was seen and I didn't dance either, but it was nice to listen to the music, but also it made me super sleepy. I'm pretty sure I was falling asleep at the table. We ended our night with getting churros and chocolate and then went home to sleep. My feet were pretty sore and my legs were pretty sweaty, but you wanna know the thing that hurt the most on me? My earlobes. Ha. I don't wear heavy earrings so my ears were killing me and I was relieved to get the earrings out of my ears. Then, I went to sleep and that was the end of my time at Feria in Sevilla. I left early the next morning and you can find the blog for the day I returned here.

There is one more thing I want to talk about to finish this blog and it's the alumbrao. The alumbrao is the official start of Feria. It takes place on Monday night and the mayor of Sevilla flips the switch and all of the lights turn on for the fair. Here is a video of the alumbrao.

The ending of Feria happens on Sunday night and is complete with fireworks and all that jazz. I was skeptical to go to Feria at first because I had just been in Germany the weekend before, but I am really glad I went and glad I could experience it, especially in the full garb. :) Thanks again, María José and Carmen. :)