Seville | Christmas Markets

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In Seville this December? Planning on some fun Christmas shopping? Seville hosts a number of street markets during the festive season which add some variety and colour to the normal high street shops and department stores, and are worth a browse around to see if you can pick up a bargain or something unusual.

The christmas book fair is still on in Plaza Nueva until Sunday (December 9), with an interesting variety of old and specialist books (mostly in Spanish, of course).  This is followed on the same site from December 14 by the annual Christmas Artesan Market, featuring handcrafted  games, gifts, clothes and accessories in wood, leather and ceramic. Of all the markets, this is the best one to head for if you’re looking for something a bit more classy than the usual market fare.

 
The Fería de Belen (nativity), where you can go to buy everything you need for your nativity scene, is in Calle Fray Ceferino González, between the cathedral and the Archivos de India. Stables, mangers, sheep, wise men, Roman centurions – you name it, they’ll have it. Browsing or buying, if you’re into either christmas or models spend a while wandering around here.

There are traditional Christmas fairs in Alameda de Hercules and Plaza de la Encarnación. The stalls are mainly artesan jewellery and leather goods, but include a traditional bread stall and some fast food and funfair style sweet stalls. For the children there are fairground rides, a visit to the tent of the Three Kings (the Spanish alternative to Father Christmas who brings them their presents on January 6) under the Metropol Parasols, “Christmas tree cones”, and a miniature train to take you from one site to the other. The highlight of a visit has to be the camel rides in the Alameda, which give you a rare chance to get close to these unusual animals.

For the first time there is a Christmas market this year alongside the Puerta Jerez and the Christina, featuring craft, jewellery and leather goods and attendant takeaway food stalls.

From December 6 to 8 only (10am to 7pm) there is an exhibition and sale of the traditional sweets, cakes and pastries made in the closed convents in and around Seville in the Gothic Palace of the Alcázar (entrance through the Patio de Banderas). Plenty to tempt anyone with a sweet tooth.

Rooms With A View

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Imagine waking up of a morning, looking out of your window, and seeing views like these! All of them are views from veoapartments in the historic and beautiful city of Seville in Southern Spain

                  

Cathedral – There are lots of apartments that give you a glimpse of the 15th century cathedral and Giralda tower, but from the Cathedral Terrace apartment you get the whole thing.
Indian Archive – This is a fine view across Constitución to the Archivos and the little garden in front of them from the Constitución 5 apartment. The Archivos were originally built during the 16th century as the trading centre for the merchandise brought back from the New World, before being converted to their present use.
Metropol Parasol – A fascinating view of the newest addition to Seville’s city centre, the world’s largest wooden building, as seen from the Laraña Terrace apartments.

  

Iglesia del Salvador – The El Salvador church as seen across the square from Salvador Terrace apartment. It was built on the site of the original Grand Mosque, and elements preserved from that time can still be seen in the church courtyard.
Alcázar Gardens – It’s only a glimpse, with one of the towers of the 12th century fortifications, but the rest of the view from the Murillo Terrace apartment is pretty good too, taking in the Plaza Santa Cruz in the heart of the old Jewish quarter.
Maestranza Bullring – This is the view across the river from the Betis Blue apartments of the Arenal waterfront, including the famous bullring, one of the oldest and best preserved in Spain.

  

 

 

 

 

Iglesia San Luis – An unusual up close and personal look at the towers and dome of San Luis church from the San Luis Terrace apartment in the famous Macarena neighbourhood of Seville.
Fine Arts Museum – A view across the street from the Museo 5 apartment to one of Spain’s most important art museums, housed in the impressive Convent de la Merced.
Isabela bridge – Seville’s iconic Triana bridge, with some of the expo ’92 pavilions in the background, again from the Betis Blue apartments in the old sailors’ and gypsy quarter of Triana.

Granada Neighbourhoods

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The ancient city of Granada in the South of Spain lies at the foot of the Sierra Nevada mountains to its east, and overlooking the fertile plain to its west, to which it owed its early prosperity. Between the eleventh century and its final conquest by the Christians in 1492 it was the most important Muslim city in Spain, and the layout of the central part of modern Granada, and the unique character of its principal neighbourhoods, still owes a lot to this period of its history.

View of the Alhambra from the San Nicolas Lookout

Granada’s most famous landmark, the Alhambra, dominates the city centre from its perch on a rocky outcrop above the deep, narrow valley of the River Darro. On the other side of the valley, on hills only a little less lofty than the Alhambra, are the neighbourhoods of the Albaicín and Sacramonte.

Where the river emerges from between the hills you can find the city’s central square, the Plaza Nueva, or New Square, so named because it was the first to be built by the Christians after the reconquest. Built over the River Darro, which runs in a culvert underneath, it’s a wide, pleasant square lined with shops and cafes, as well as the historic court house. To the south and east is the neighbourhood of Realejo-San Matias, and to the south and west that of el Centro.

Albaicín

Moroccan Market in the Albaicín

The Albaicín neighbourhood is one of the oldest parts of the city, and is made up of a network of steep, winding streets and small squares, many with wonderful views of the famous palace fortress, with the Sierra Nevada in the background beyond. Best known of the miradores, or lookouts, is San Nicolas, and it’s a great place to come in the evening for a drink, look across to the Alhambra, and if you’re lucky, to hear some Flamenco or Spanish guitar.

After the reconquest it became the Muslim quarter of the city, but with the expulsion or conversion of Muslims by the Catholic Kings it gradually became depopulated, and before long moneyed Christians began to move in, demolishing the small houses and building what became known as Carmenes or grand houses with gardens or orchards. The mosques were demolished and replaced with churches, although remnants of the original buildings can still be glimpsed, as in the Church of San Salvador. Another feature of muslim architecture that can still be found dotted around the area is the aljibes, underground cisterns built for the storage of water.

Today, there is a distinctly North African feel to the lower Albaicín with tearooms and small shops selling Moroccan goods. In 2003 the upper Albaicín became home to the Main Mosque of Granada, the first in the city since 1492.

The Albaicín is, above all, a neighbourhood for wandering slowly through narrow streets, taking pleasure in hidden corners and the scents from the many gardens; peeping into Carmenes; and enjoying the spectacular views from its terraces and miradores.

Sacramonte

Flamenco Caves in Sacromonte

Beyond the Albaicín is what is surely Granada’s most picturesque neighbourhood, the Sacramonte, named for the 17th century abbey at the top of the Valparaíso hill, which is well worth the trouble of a visit. It’s known as the gypsy neighbourhood, and is notable for the whitewashed cave houses built into the hill, and for being the best place in the city for Flamenco.

Realejo-San Matias

The Realejo is the old Jewish quarter of the city, and like the Albaicín on the other side of the Alhambra, has many steep, labyrinthine streets, with whitewashed houses and Carmenes. The most famous of these, the Carmen de los Martires, is open to the public and enjoys lovely views over the plains, the city and Sierra Nevada. Go up to the Campo del Principe for the bars and restaurants, and walk back down past the Casa de los Tiros, the Antigua Capitania and the Convent of the Mercadarias to San Matias street, another place with lots of places to eat and drink.

El Centro

To the southwest of Plaza Nueva is El Centro, the main commercial centre. Just off the Gran Via you can find the Cathedral and the Royal Chapel, both built in the 16th century as part of the process of Christianization of the city. Nearby is San Agustin, the main food market, and the Alcaicería, once the Arab silk market, but now mainly lined with souvenir shops. Behind these is the Plaza Bib-Rambla, a grand open square with a central fountain called the Gigantes, colonnades, bars and restaurants. Although it has undergone many changes, there has been a public space here since early Nasrid times, which has been used for markets, bullfights, fairs and autos-da-fé.

View from Granada Studio Terrace in the Plaza Nueva

Flamenco

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Among the many attractions that bring visitors to the south of Spain, one of the most popular (after the sun, food, and spectacular monuments) is Flamenco. We probably all carry a picture of foot-stamping dancers, the men in smart waistcoats and tight trousers, the women in flouncy polka-dot dresses, a Spanish guitarist, and a ring of hand-clapping spectators in the shadows around the edge of the firelight, and a sneaking suspicion that the real thing is not quite like that. So what is flamenco?

For a start you can forget the firelight – these days performances are indoors – and while you may see polka-dot dresses, they are usually a feature of Sevillanas, which is a flamenco-influenced folk dance that is popular at fairs and festivals. Both classical and popular, and declared an Intangible World Heritage Treasure by UNESCO in 2010, Flamenco is a performance art form combining both music and dance. The name is thought to derive from the Arabic Fela Mengu, or travelling peasant, referring to the Gypsies and other “rootless” people, who began to bring together many of the elements that make up modern Flamenco, which was born in Andalusia about three hundred years ago. Its roots, however, are much older, and we can illustrate this with some examples.

Castanets developed from the crotalos, a hand percussion instrument from the island of Crete, brought to Spain by the Phoenicians more than 2500 years ago.

The distinctive sinuous hand movements originated in Punjabi dance on the Indian sub-continent, and came to Spain with the Gitanos, or Gypsies, arriving around the 16th century.

“Spanish” guitar originated in North Africa, developing in the Moorish kingdoms there and in southern Spain.

The Ida y Vuelta (going and coming back) varieties of Flamenco refer to the music that Spanish explorers took to the New World, and brought back incorporating the rhythms of the indigenous people.

Flamenco dance has a fixed structure, but within that structure the dancer is free to improvise. The musicians follow the dancer (in a Flamenco performance you may notice that the guitarist watches the dancer closely), but the palmas (hand-clapping) are a “human metronome” that keeps the dancer’s rhythm within the structure.

There are about 50-60 palos or styles of Flamenco, depending on how they are categorised, each with its own rhythm and tempo that express the full range of human emotion. Unlike most other traditional music and dance forms, Flamenco is still evolving, giving rise to new styles like flamenco fusion and jazz, and flamenco fashion.

Where to See Flamenco

For more information, visit our pages Flamenco in Seville and Flamenco in Granada

Lentil and Chorizo Stew

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With winter on the way and temperatures set to plummet even here in Southern Spain, it’s time to haul out the recipe books and cook up some of those good old-fashioned stick-to-your-ribs winter warmers that your mother used to make.

In Spain, that means cocina de cuchara, or dishes eaten with a spoon, and first and foremost of these are the potajes (the word potage still exists in English), which are bean stews, usually cooked with added meat and vegetables. Cheap, filling, tasty and nutritious (4 out of 4) these stews of lentils, alubias or garbanzos, very common and traditional in Spain, deserve to be much more popular than they are in some northern parts of Europe.

Below is one of our favourite recipes for a lentil and chorizo potage, a variant of a recipe you can find in Janet Mendel’s Cooking in Spain. It’s easy to make, even for novice cooks, and gives a minimum of 4 servings.

1/2 kilo quick cooking brown lentils
2 litres boiling water
400 grams longhaniza rojo sausages (or chorizo)
1 head of garlic cloves, peeled & sliced lengthwise in half
1 large onion, chopped
2 italian green peppers, chopped
100 grams sliced roasted red peppers (from a jar)
2 carrots, chopped
2 large tomatoes, chopped
1 tsp each of sea salt, black pepper, cumin and pimentón dulce (La Chinata is best)
olive oil

Cook the sausages in a large saucepan, then chop up and put aside, reserving some of the juices from the pan. Sauté the onions, peppers and garlic in a bit of olive oil until onions are translucent. Set aside.

In a large pot add the lentils to boiling salted water and stir well. Then add the carrots, tomatoes, sautéed veg, sausage and spices. Mix well, cover and simmer on low heat for about an hour and a half, stirring frequently. Add the reserved pan juices for extra flavour if desired. Yum!