The April Fair in Seville, Spain
That was a special Monday. All my friends came to start the evening with drinks at my apartment. At midnight it would be the opening of the April Fair and my apartment was two blocks fromthe gates, so was the perfect place to start our night. The typical drink of the fair is Manzanilla so each person who arrived at my place brought a bottle. We were close to 20 people, all happy and excited about that week.
The yearly April Fair started in 1847 and takes place two weeks after the Holy week. It is always the first fair in Spain and it lasts for a week starting Monday at midnight and ending on Sunday. Seville is the capital of Andalucia and known to be the most Spanish of cities. If you really want to feel the energy of this place the best moment to visit is during the April Fair.
I was drinking and talking to my guests when I looked at my watch and noticed it was close to 11:30 so I stopped the music and we headed to the gates.
At midnight the fireworks were beautiful and the fair was officially open. We started to walk, it was crowded and most of people were dressed in traditional clothes. You could feel being there 200 years ago, I am sure the atmosphere would be the same. The woman wore long dresses with hot colors and big flowers in their hair, the men were in suits, horses every where and the flamenco music in the background filling the scene.
The fair happened in a vast area in the neighborhood of Los Remedios and was entirely covered in rows of casetas (individual decorated marquee tents which are temporarily built at the fairground). Some of these casetas are public and others belong to families, groups of friends, clubs or associations.
Larissa, Mariana my closest friends at that time and I went to meet my friend Alejo, whose family had one of the casetas. When we arrived we were impress that his caseta was the biggest in that area. His entire family was in traditional clothing and were dancing very happily to sevillanas (tradicional seville music) and flamenco. We went straight to the bar (inside all casetas there are bars with drinks and food) got glasses of manzanilla and ate some tapas.
There were people coming and going from all of the casetas the entire time and we meet many of Alejo`s friends and other family members. Alejo taught us to dance sevillanas and it was a fantastic time.
Later on we went to meet one of Larissa`s friends at a public caseta. He was part of a group of Germans who were visiting the city that week. When we arrived they were seated at tables eating tapas and drinking manzanilla, fascinated with how delicious everything was. That caseta had a group singing and was beautifully decorated. At the bar there was everything for sell, many options of drinks, tapas and desserts.
We were talking, eating and drinking for a long time. The Germans did not speak Spanish and at that time my english was terrible so I do not know how it was possible, maybe it was the atmosphere at that moment.The group started singing the songs that Alejo had just taught us and based on what we learned we taught the Germans how to dance sevillanas.
The time pasted so fast, we meet a lot of people and had a lot of fun. At end the night or better yet start of the day we went to eat churros with chocolate, a typical after fair dessert.
This was just the first night and the sensation of happiness and fun was unforgettable.