SEVILLE APRIL FAIR
A colorful celebration of the joy of life
Nowhere like Seville to enjoy a rollicking fiesta
It may sound like a cliché, but you can trust an Andalusian to see the opportunity for party and good time when the rest of us would probably resign to a life of boredom…
The history of the Seville April fair dates back to 1847, when two Councillors of the city decided to organize a livestock fair. Curiously enough, none of the Councillors had been born in Andalusia (one was from Catalonia and the other from the Basque Country), and chances are that when they envisioned the fair, they were genuinely thinking about an opportunity for business, with little idea of the merry mayhem that they were about to create.
Every year, two weeks after Easter, Seville dresses up in color and light as all the local society (and over five million visitors) visit the fairgrounds.
The “Real Feria”, where the April Fair takes place, harbours over 1000 casetas- tent pavillions of varying sizes- arranged along 12 streets; though there are some public casetas, most of them are privately owned by influential families, corporations, clubs or even political parties, and only accessible with an invitation. Inside the casetas the music and dancing (mostly Sevillanas) never ceases, and there is a non-stop flow of tapas and rebujito (a refreshing mixture of dry sherry-known as manzanilla- and lemonade) to help you recover your strength and keep partying until morning.
Some of the men, and almost every woman, wear the traditional costumes -traje corto for him, flamenco dress for her- indispensable to best get into the spirit of the fair.
Though I sincerely doubt that there is much buying and selling of cattle involved in the April Fair nowadays, with over 5 million visitors every year I am quite sure that the original promotors would be very happy with the success of their Project!.
