IT is in spring, from March to May, that Seville is chiefly visited; the warm air and hot sun, the orange-trees in flower, the great religious festivals, the famous bull-fights, attract a host of foreigners, and the city has an animation unwonted even in the gay and lively capital of AndalucÍa. In winter Seville has a quieter, but perhaps not less potent charm. Winter often brings with it a succession of cool clear days, when the sky is of a serene, almost transparent blue, with golden sunsets. The white lines of flat-roofed houses seen against the blue of the evening sky have the soft light and colouring of opals, while the distant hills of the horizon are faintly purple. On these still days the motionless river reflects the lines of leafless silver birch and yellow tamarisks in all the tracery of their slender branches. A few yards further from the bank on either side thousands of dark orange-trees are hung with gleaming fruit, circling the city with a fringe of lamps. Above and through the trees, now bare and grey, of the Paseo de las Delicias show the various greens of the tall eucalyptus-trees and palms, the orange-trees and cypresses of the Santelmo gardens. On the quay lie immense mounds of oranges ready to be packed: the hot sun fills the air with their scent, children make flying attacks and retire precipitately with an orange apiece, while an occasional beggar also receives his dole from the apparently inexhaustible store. In the ever-crowded Calle de las Sierpes small open stalls display fresh violets and magnificent carnations and roses, and in some gardens one may see roses and geraniums in flower. In the lovely gardens of the AlcÁzar the sun draws a deliciously mingled scent from the box-hedges, myrtles and oranges.

Occasionally—still in unclouded weather—the wind is cold and piercing and all go muffled to the eyes, the men in their capas, the women with long shawls. In the Patio de los Naranjos, beneath the trees laden with oranges, the wind sweeps across the pavement of rough bricks, intergrown with grass and the duller green of mosses, and rattles the fallen leaves in lines and circles. Far above, the great Giralda tower stands pink and creamy grey in the clear winter sky. By the Gate of Pardon, in a corner of hot sun and sheltered from the wind, a few beggars sit warming themselves and watching with Oriental patience and immobility. The streets are mostly too narrow to let in the sun, but in the plazas and any open space men are seen basking in sunshine, tomando el sol. Along the bridge that leads to the suburb of Triana the seats on both sides are crowded. Triana, better than Seville, corresponds to Cervantes’ description of a city where adventures are to be met at every street corner, and Triana supplies an army of loiterers whose life’s mission in winter is to “take the sun.”

On the eve of high festivals in winter, such as the Epiphany, it is already growing dark when services are held, and the vast Cathedral is faintly lit with hundreds of candles and dim hanging lamps, though the last daylight still lingers awhile in the deep reds and purples, green, orange, and every colour of the windows overhead. There is no procession of the Three Kings through the city; at Alcoy, in the province of Valencia, the Three Kings come riding, laden with presents, into the town from beyond the grey mountains that surround it, and half the population goes out to meet them, but Seville is too “civilized” for this.

Even in Seville not all the winter days are cloudless and serene. On some of them the sky is a uniform grey, and the rain falls unceasingly till the centre of the narrower, unevenly cobbled streets, raised at either side and without a pavement, becomes a running stream. But when the Andalusian sun reappears, the houses have an added freshness in their glowing white, or in their coats of faint green or red, yellow or purple (though even these usually have a line of white along the roof), and in the air is a feeling of spring. There is an ancient Andalusian song that makes March say to January—

(With the three days that are left me and three lent me by my friend April, I will put your sheep in such a plight that you will remember me.) This is the Cumbrian:—

But the rigour of the days that follow in Cumberland has no place or parallel in the low-lying districts of AndalucÍa:—

At Seville a few weeks after the Day of the Kings winter is really over: in February the sky has an intenser blue, and with the longer sunshine the warmth increases. The spring days follow in their matchless splendour, till finally the sun’s fiery heat drives all who can leave the city to the cooler refuge of the sea or the hills.