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Published: October 1st 2012
“The duende, then, is a power, not a work. It is a struggle, not a thought. I have heard an old maestro of the guitar say, ”The duende is not in the throat; the duende climbs up inside you, from the soles of the feet.’ Meaning this: it is not a question of ability, but of true, living style, of blood, of the most ancient culture, of spontaneous creation … everything that has black sounds in it, has duende.” Lorca, 1933
Despite the early experience of stress dropping the car off at Santa Justa railway station after travelling through the outer burbs of Sevilla we were delighted to find that our AirBnB apartment was perfectly situated – a spectacular floodlit view of Catedral from the balcony by night and an stroll to everywhere we wanted to go by day within a kilometre radius.
We were swept up into a bit of gypsy palm reading on day one on our way to the Catedral – a truly hypnotic experience! We escaped only 3 euros poorer, thank goodness!
Having avoided the recorded audio guides at previous tourist venues we caved in and got one each for the Sevilla Catedral. There were about forty different stops along the way–each one with a little story about a saint or an apse or a relic or a virgin or a pope or a patron or a triptych or a chapel or a nave or a buttress or a vault or an altar or a crucifix or a sceptre or a fresco - oh …you get the picture!
From the top of the bell tower – (conveniently converted from the previous prayer tower of
an existing mosque) we could see the balcony of our apartment. Thankfully no audio guide needed for that!
After our day of religious iconography we were after some more earthly delights at night and took our AirBNB host Juan’s recommendation of a local bar ‘Le Carboneria’ for a taste of flamenco.
We followed his instructions down some cobbled streets of Barrio Santa Cruz to an old coal storage space turned into a bar and performance area. It is only recognizable by a big red door and you have to go inside through a large atrium space to enter a back bar where the action is taking place.
Needless to say I fell in love with this place and went there three times to see the same dancer – Rocio ‘Turronera’ ‘strut her stuff’! Black dress, Green dress, Blue dress – Negro, Verde, Azur.
And you know what? I reckon I got a serve of duende. The experience of sitting up that close to a powerful trio of guitar, voice (cantador) and dance is a true ‘hair rising on the back of your neck’ experience!
Rocio particularly was an extremely powerful and commanding performer and had
a glower to shrink you to the size of a pea and a smile that the crowd had to work hard for. And when we got it – it was worth it!
We also had read about a show at ‘Casa de la Memoria’ in courtyard of an old Sevillian mansion (now a hotel) that sounded great. No doubting it was a spectacular venue and it was probably more a professional show but it was viewed in rows and at a distance from the performers and for my money it just wasn’t quite as compelling as the ‘Le Carboneria’ experience – duende it seems is a mercurial phenomena.
Most of the time we were in Sevilla it rained. The only other time was one day in Barcelona early in our trip yet we had been lugging our leopard skin print ‘paraguas’ all over Spain ever since! Although it was raining it wasn’t cold and we walked and walked and kept relatively dry. Oh Paraguas we love you!
We visited the Alcazar Palace in the pouring rain - water shooting from ancient wall spouts into the decorative pools. We were more impressed with the preservation of the Moorish
plasterwork here than the famed Alhambra in Granada. The lack of hoards of other tourists helped too I think.
Isabella and Ferdinand had done a lovely job of DIY here too though. In about every forth panel they had replaced the Islamic plasterwork with a royal crest just to put their special stamp on the place. Oh such a special couple those two!
Our Sevilla sojourn at and end we lugged the cases down endless flights of stairs and rumbled our way to a cab to the station and made it onto the Renfe Train that shot through the fog shrouded countryside at 150km an hour to Madrid.
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RENanDREW
Ren & Andrew
love this photo!