Cultures in Conversation: The Alcazar, Jewish Quarter, and Spanish Flamenco
By Amelia Foti
Meeting at a generous 9:30am after a breakfast of chocolate donuts and coffee, we began our day with a short walk to the Real Alcazar of Seville where our local guide Daniel took us through the massive buildings and sprawling gardens.
The Alcazar, a term derived from from the Arabic word al-qasr (palace), is comprised of three restored buildings: Casa de la Contratación (House of Commerce), Palacio Mudejar/del Rey Don Pedro, and Palacio Gótico. Additionally, we learned that although these buildings were remodelled and reconstructed over the years, they have a history stretching far back to the Almohad Caliphate which ruled Al-Andalus (modern-day Spain) and utilized Seville as the capital of this region in the 12th and 13th centuries.
As we walked through the first part of the Alcazar, the House of Commerce, I found myself incredibly fascinated by what was said regarding the building’s function. The building itself is still in use as a conference room for certain important political meetings. For example, after Latin American countries gained independence from Spanish rule, the leaders of these new nations were invited into the House of Commerce as an attempt to build the countries’ relationship with one another. Additionally, the historical importance of this area could not be understated as it contains some of the earliest maps of the Americas, as well as being the location early explorers traveled to in order to request that the king allow them to travel to America, with the crests of these explorers being displayed on the wall.
While this is all incredibly interesting to me, the things left unsaid felt particularly fascinating and seem to reflect much of the historical memory in Spain. We saw this best when examining a painting in the Casa de la Contratación which depicts the Virgin Mary with a series of explorers (including Christopher Columbus) surrounded by four saints, one of which is known as Saint James Matamoro or the ‘Moorish Killer.’ This depiction of the Age of Exploration provides a more romanticized viewpoint on what is often considered a dark period of history in which thousands of indigenous people were subjugated under the Spanish king. Seeing this romanticization of the past really caused me to think of the themes of memory in this dialogue with what we choose to adopt into our identity compared to what we choose to forget. Reckoning with a fraught past is a notoriously difficult task but as the morals of a society change and evolve over time, the need to remember and to have conversations about difficult topics also grows.
As we continued through the Alcazar, we made our way through the Palacio del Rey Don Pedro and took in the stunning Mudejar architecture. The Mudejars, or Muslims that remained in Spain after the reconquista, utilized a plethora of techniques endemic to Islamic architecture including ceramic work, Quranic inscriptions, arches, and the use of courtyards as a method of heat control. There is also the inclusion of the Muslim twelve-point star on the ceiling of the throne room which we were lucky to take a very fun picture of as a class. The use of Islamic architectural elements that I have seen several times in Moroccan riads and madrasas represents a very interesting cultural dialogue to me as we can see how this heavy Islamic influence permeates the very Catholic city of Seville. One interesting observation I noticed regarding this was the fact that as the courtyard was being reconstructed in the 19th century, the architect hid small faces in some of the traditional Islamic arches. This idea of illustrating people is explicitly forbidden in Islam and the creation of these faces hundreds of years after the original arches were built demonstrates this communication between cultures, in this case the culture of Muslims in Medieval Spain and the culture of a predominantly Catholic 19th-century Spain. In a broader sense, the Palacio Gótico portion of the Alcazar contains heavy Catholic architectural influences, utilizing a Gothic style of construction which completely contrasts the Palacio del Ray Don Pedro and showcases the very layered combination of both Islamic and Catholic culture in the Alcazar’s architecture.
After exploring the inside of the Alcazar, we made our way outside to explore the sprawling gardens which contain an incredible amount of biodiversity, with plants that are sourced from all over the world, including a tree donated by Eva Peron. My personal favorite part of these gardens was getting a chance to see (and hear) peacocks, including one that was attempting to show off.
After leaving the Alcazar, we explored the nearby Jewish Quarter of Seville, which once housed several synagogues and a Jewish cemetery. Unfortunately, after the Expulsion of Jews in 1492, the synagogues were turned into churches and the Jewish cemetery was paved over into a parking lot. This means that the current Jewish community doesn’t have an official cemetery or place of worship, but they are still able to worship in each other’s homes. The Jewish quarter itself has some of the oldest streets in Seville and is known for its vibrant tapas scene, which interestingly enough contains a few restaurants that were converted Hammams, another example of cultural exchange within Seville that was super fascinating.
We ended the night with a beautiful boat cruise late in the day on the Guadalquivir River and a flamenco performance. This river specifically relates to cultural exchange between Muslims and Christians as it also has an Arabic name that translates to “the great river,” demonstrating that in both the Islamic and Catholic kingdoms in medieval Seville, this river was incredibly significant as a lifeline to the Atlantic Ocean.
As a former dancer, watching Spanish flamenco, a type of dance and music characterized by singing, guitar playing, feet stomping, complex hand-clapping, the use of castanets, flourishing upper body movement, and finger snapping, was a nearly religious experience. I found myself completely enamored with the dancer’s movements, watching them essentially create their own music save for the guitar and singing in the background. The pure emotion that I saw through the dancer’s movements and the singer’s voice was awe-inspiring, breaking through the language barrier and allowing me to understand the story without knowing the words. The beauty of flamenco is entrenched in a long and controversial history. Originating in Southern Spain and primarily performed by Romani individuals, Flamenco was often viewed as either a backwards distraction or a dangerous art style that would lead to immodesty. Despite this, Flamenco has continued to flourish as an art form, particularly with foreign tourists but also within the country, ultimately leading to it becoming a part of UNESCO’s intangible cultural heritage.
A traditional Spanish Flamenco dance. Video by Amelia Foti.