Sevilla - The Feria

It would seem that after the solemnity of Holy Week (Easter), the week of the Feria is a chance to party and have fun! The Sevilla Feria is the largest in Andalucia and though originally started in the mid 1800's as a livestock fair, since the 1920's has become a week-long extravaganza of wining and dining! An explosion of colour, music and dancing which goes on all day and night in a temporary tent city - rows and rows of around a thousand brightly coloured canvas 'casetas', mostly privately owned, though there are some community casetas, erected specially for this one week and covering an area of approx 1 mile square - enough to swallow 54 football pitches! Rows of pretty paper lanterns hanging over the streets. The men dress in their traditional short jackets, tight trousers, boots and hats (cordobes) whilst the women look wonderful in their spectacularly colourful flamenco style dresses.

From around midday the 'Paseo de Caballos' takes place - around 3,000 horsemen and women and carriages make their way through the city to the Feria ground when they ride up and down the 'streets' between the rows of casetas - carriages full of friends and families;


men on their fine horses some fathers their little girls dressed so sweetly in their posh frocks; young boys sitting so
straight backed and proud on their horses;


men with their lasses somehow managing to sit behind them side saddle amongst the voluminous frilled dresses -


All quite an unbelievable spectacle and certainly not like anything I've ever seen before. In between the partying everyday life still goes on - it's a strange sight seeing women in their magnificent dresses hopping on and off buses, doing the shopping and going around their everyday business! We enjoyed the atmosphere of the Feria which we wandered around one afternoon but felt rather like gate-crashers and decided against any attempt to join in!! We should perhaps have got an inkling as we walked to the Feria ground in our casual walking clothes, sandals and rucsac feeling most out of place surrounded by these beautifully dressed women flooding down the street to the Feria (those that don't arrive in style by carriage!)

Maybe for another year we might get to know a Spanish family and receive an invitation - then I shall definitely have to go and seek out one of those spectacular dresses! One very good reason to consider over-wintering in Sevilla perhaps?

I have (today) made the first steps - literally! I attended my first flamenco dance class in the village hall which was great fun and if I can only get my legs and arms co-oordinated and stop looking like a windmill going at top speed I might just grasp the most basic of the dance steps!!