"Yo me quedo en Sevilla hasta el final"

I come from places where you need central heating. It came as a shock when, in Granada two years ago, I only had two hours of heat in the morning and two hours in the afternoon at my homestay. I learned to keep my bedroom door tightly shut to trap the heat, to wear a sweatshirt over a wool sweater over a shirt, to read under the covers even during the day. I also learned to go out and walk around in the sun to warm up, because the temperature inside the stone house was often colder than the temperature outside.

In Sevilla, the houses often have no real heat at all. I learned this in the process of looking for an apartment. As Professor Raúl Navarro of the Escuela de Estudio Hispano-Americanos here explained to me, in Sevilla there exists a culture of fending off heat. Sevillanos imagine themselves to live in an incredible warm place. Their houses have tile floors and blinds that can completely shut out the light, and these days most are equipped with air conditioning. Time and again, landlords and tenants told me, "Es que no hace mucho frío en Sevilla." "It just doesn't get that cold in Sevilla." But I have also heard that people from northern parts say that they've never been colder than when they stayed in Sevilla, precisely because of the lack of central heating that people in colder places generally get used to.

How warm or cold Sevilla actually is, is almost irrelevant to the cultural imagination of the city. Sevilla portrays itself as a warm, friendly place that is always sunny, and where anyone can live the life he or she wants to. As the popular song "Yo me quedo en Sevilla" by Pata Negra puts it, "Vente pa cá y déjate de frío." "Come over here and leave behind the cold." It's as if the song is promising that the guitar strums and yellow streetlights will always make everything better, will always keep you warm. The warmth of the city is much more than just physical warmth, then. I have yet to see how cold Sevilla really gets. But for now, I am enjoying the sun--in fact, sometimes melting in it.

At Puerta de Jerez, right next to the cathedral.

On the first Wednesday after I arrived in Sevilla, I attended an event at the Casa del Libro bookstore that mixed poetry and music. Omar Coello recited poems about the value of living life in the moment, of appreciating what one has, of understanding that it is never too late to leave behind fear, guilt, and resentment to embrace life without these burdens. José Ángel Muñoz Granado accompanied the poems on piano, guitar, or drums. This was not the loosely improvised jazz accompaniment of the Lizard Lounge in Cambridge, Massachusetts. On the contrary, "El niño de la isla" played to the rhythm of the poet's phrases in a practiced performance that displayed a skilled harmony of music and words. And the music was far from simply the background for the words. Instead Coello sat and gave space to the musician at interludes, during which Muñoz Granado performed pieces whose lyrics complemented the words of spoken poetry. In these moments, the musician and his guitar were a unit, and while he played many different styles of music, it was when he played his flamenco pieces that he truly displayed his talent, and the audience began to clap out palmas in proper rhythm and sing along, and the poet looked at me with an expression of amusement because I seemed so incredibly taken with whole thing.


One of the songs he played was "Yo me quedo en Sevilla." It sings the praises of streets and plazas of Triana, the neighborhood where many flamenco cantes were born. I had just come from walking in Triana, and as I listened to the song and began to sing along, I felt a belonging to the city, and thought that I was beginning to understand why someone would sincerely sing:

Si tu te vas, si tu te vas, yo me quedo en Sevilla hasta el final, 
Si tu te vas, si tu te vas, yo me quedo en Sevilla hasta el final.

Acuesto con Sevilla por el mundo,
No me mudo de barrio por un beso.  
Canto pa saber que estoy cantando, 
Vivo pa saber que estoy viviendo.

Si tu te vas, si tu te vas, yo me quedo en Sevilla hasta el final, 

Si tu te vas, si tu te vas, yo me quedo en Sevilla hasta el final.