The Coolidge examiner., 1932-09-23

CEVILLE, center for a few hours
y recently of a rOyalist uprising,
is described as "the most
Spanish city of Spain" by many Of
the visitors who travel down from
Madrid and up from Cadiz and
come to a brief halt in this famed
town of southern Spain, capital of
ancient Andalusia, sun-swathed city
of splotched shadows, where en-
croaching modernity seems ever to
struggle futilely against the strongly
entrenched, if slightly crumbling,
glory of long ago.
And perhaps those folk who are
wont thus to describe Seville are
right. Probably nowhere else in all
the Iberian peninsula does one
come upon more definite traces of
that luxuriant flower that was Old
Spain than in this city of a quar-
ter Of a million souls, which strag-
giles along the banks of the slow
moving Guadalquivir river.
In Madrid, in Barcelona, in other
thriving cities of the North and
East, one IS in Spain, to be sure;
but a Spain revivified, cosmopoli-
tan, commercialized. In the high
interior, from Caceres to Castellon,
one likewise knows Spain; but it is a
rural Spain, a credulous, Graded
Spain, where the simple beauties of
blue skies and verdant hillsides are
somehow transmitted to ones daily
life.
And in the mOuntain-top towns of
the South, crumbled outposts of
Moslem might, one finds the Span
ish influence still strangely subdued
by moldering remnants of the once
far-fung Moorish empire.
But Seville is a delightful blend
of the romantic past and the busy,
quick-moving present. Along smooth
ly paved streets are churches hoary
with age and beside them steel
framed office buildings.
Buried Roman City.
A few miles from Seville the
buried Roman city of Italica, of
which thus far only the arena has
been fully excavated, gives mute, If
muddy, evidence of that classic civ
ilization which was in full flower
at the birth of the Christian era.
And the Tower of Gold, while
1t is slightly grimy from steam
boats tunnels in the Guadalquivir
river, is not greatly changed from
that day in 1920 when the Moorish
governor of Seville conspired with
the western suns reflection to give
1t a name.
But it was the virility Of west
ern Christendom, building on the
Orient's lavish splendor, that made
the Seville of today. Not until
mosques were transformed into
churches did this city, Nesting at
the threshold of European civiliza-
tion attain its rightful place in
the sun. Phoenician, Carthaginian,
Roman, Goth, Jew, Saracen, Christian
all collaborated in the making of
Seville; but the greatest of these
carried the cross.
1t is In the nature Of things that
the people of Seville should blend
in their present lives a little of
each of the eventful epochs of the
city's past. Each race, in linger-
ing and passing, has left something
to the Sevillano, whether it be In
language, customs, architecture, or
in mere physical characteristics.
Few of these gifts appear upper
most today, however. Many racial
threads twine through the tapestry
that depicts the life in Seville as
1t is lived at present; but all Of
these strands have been happily
woven into a fabric wherein is por-
trayed the glory of the past, the
awakened strivings of the present,
and a future that is at once promis-
ing and undetermined.
The ordinary visitor to Seville
learns little about the home life of
the Sevillanos, for their home life
is thing apart.
There is no great mystery about
it. 1t is very simple, fulsome, sat
isfying to its several members, and
complete unto itself. 1t is taken
for-granted part of existence and
seldom enters into the discussions
and activities of everyday life.
Foreign admittance thereto is not
desired-indeed, is not comprehend
ed-and in fact there is little social
intercourse among the families
| themselves.
Antique dealers are found on
every hand. The resurrection and,
If the truth must be known, the con-
temporary manufacturer of IAN
tiques" constitute one of the city's
! leading industries.