Walking Across Spain: La Plaza de España

Today a group of my friends and I visited another must-see Sevillian landmark: the Plaza de España, along with the Parque de María Luisa. It was absolutely amazing, and way too detailed and grand to fully absorb in one visit, so I know I’ll have to go back sometime soon!

The Plaza de España, built for the Ibero-American Exposition of 1929.

According to our tour guide, most major cities in Spain have their own “Plaza de España.” The Plaza in Seville was constructed for the 1929 Ibero-American Exposition. The Exposition was a world’s fair intended to commemorate the strong relationship between Spain, Portugal, and several Latin American countries. For this purpose, Spain invested a lot of time and money into constructing the Plaza and several surrounding buildings in order to show off Spanish culture and progress. The Plaza alone took 14 years to build!

Panoramic view of one side of the Plaza.

The Plaza was built in a wide “U” shape, representing an abrazo (hug) and open, welcoming arms. 52 Spanish cities are represented in alphabetical order across the Plaza by tile murals depicting famous citizens of each town, important historical events, or other notable cultural traditions.

Each city’s section includes a tile mural, benches where people from the respective cities often pose for pictures, and even small shelves that once held books about each area.

I really liked the way our guide expressed it: The Plaza’s design enables you to walk across Spain and visit every city in a single afternoon. After walking across all of Spain, you can walk across the rest of the world and visit the nearby consulate buildings for various countries that were also constructed for the Expo.

One of the four bridges across the canal built into the Plaza.

If you don’t want to walk across Spain, you can rent a boat and pass through Spain on the canal that is encircled by the Plaza. The canal represents the Guadalquivir River, which Christopher Columbus and many other early explorers used to sail out of Spain and on to the New World. For some time, this was the only navigable river in Spain, and became the gateway to New World exploration. Four bridges span the canal, each representing the four kingdoms that combined and created Spain as we know it today: Castile, León, Aragon, and Navarre.

The Plaza was basically designed to look older than it actually is!

The architect of the Plaza was Aníbal Gonzalez. Inspired by old palaces and the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, Gonzalez wanted to design a structure that looked older than it actually was. This Renaissance Revival style included elements of Art Deco that were popular at the time, as well as Neo-Mudéjar architecture that is popular throughout this region of Spain.

The Plaza de España has been featured in several movies over the years, including:

Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002)

and Lawrence of Arabia (1962) (The clip below is from the Spanish dub.)

Here are some more of my favorite pictures from the Plaza this afternoon:

More beautiful ceramic work!

On this tour we didn’t get a chance to go inside the buildings or up to the balconies. All the more reason to go back!

Painted ceramic details on one of the bridges.

Very grand!

Adjacent to the Plaza de España is the Parque de María Luisa. Most of the park’s area was once the gardens of the Palace of San Telmo. According to our guide, the Infanta María Luisa was very sad when her husband passed away, and so in 1893, she donated all of the gardens to the city of Seville for the creation of a public park. The park was thus named for her, and is still considered a romantic spot for its beauty, and its origin story.

The Fuente de los Leones (“Fountain of the Lions”) with the Plaza de España visible in the background.

The Mudéjar Pavilion, built for the Expo as part of “Plaza de América”, now the Museum of Arts and Traditions of Sevilla.

Our tour guide walked us through portions of the park, and told us areas we should check out on a return visit. One of the most interesting things was a small garden near the Plaza de América buildings where hundreds of birds seem to congregate. Seville has a lot of pigeons and doves, and in this area they’ve become really aggressive if you have food. As a sort of tourist attraction, people have set up stalls nearby where they sell birdseed and watch the birds go crazy. It’s like something out of a Hitchcock movie!

Don’t feed the birds!!

The Pavilion of King Alfonso XII, part of the original palace gardens that became the Parque de María Luisa.

Our tour guide described how, in developing the park for the Expo, trees and plants from all over the world were imported and planted. Because of the diverse variety of plants, the park has a “wild” feel. As our guide described, if the park is a symbol of love, then it makes sense that love should be wild.

One of the last areas of the Park we visited was the Monument to Bécquer, a Spanish poet known for his works on the subject of love. His monument is composed of statues surrounding a tree: a statue of the poet himself, of a fallen angel, of Cupid, and of three women. The three women represent different stages of love. From left to right: the first woman doesn’t know what to expect from love, the second knows what love is and is overwhelmed by it, and the third demonstrates what happens when love vanishes. However, the statue wraps around the entire tree, and is meant to indicate that one’s love life is like a carousel spinning around, and once a person has loved and lost, they can love again. People often visit the monument and place bouquets of flowers in the arms of the woman representing the stage of love they’re experiencing at that moment!

The Monument to Bécquer.

Now, some other updates! Since my last post, I have accomplished a lot: I successfully withdrew Euros from a Spanish ATM, I purchased toiletry items from a Spanish supermarket, I visited a Spanish public library, and I started my intensive grammar class at CIEE. Phew!

I also visited the Archivo General de los Indias! Another UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Archivo was once a 16th century trade house for goods brought in from the New World. However, beginning in 1785, it was rededicated and became the building designated to house all documentation regarding the overseas Spanish empire. Today, the Archivo contains over 80 million pages of original documents, including journals of Christopher Columbus, Papal Bulls, correspondence between explorers and Spanish monarchs, and the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas, which demarcated the boundaries of Spain and Portugal and their respective territories. I wasn’t allowed to photograph any of the exhibits, but the building itself was pretty neat!

The exterior of the Archivo.

Beautiful ceilings inside the Archivo!

It’s been a busy past few days! I’m still trying to get used to my daily schedule, and I don’t think I’ll really start to settle in until classes get going in a few weeks. However, there’s plenty to see and do, so I’m trying to stay active and explore the city as much as I can! There are a few more sightseeing trips scheduled for this week, including a day trip to Cádiz this weekend! I can’t wait!