31 Monday Jul 2023
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Pics from last week’s Velá de Santa Ana. Managed to pop over on the final day to see the Cucaña (which I love) when young people, mostly teens, vie to grab the flag at the end of a greased wooden pole. Noticed this time the unfortunate BURGER KING ad on the side of the boat but the joy of the participants is always fun to watch.
08 Thursday Jun 2023
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Pics of Plaza San Francisco taken yesterday evening. For the first time ever the Corpus Christi procession has been cancelled due to rain. Normally I would have been up and out at the crack of dawn today to walk the route (pre-procession) before the crowds hit and then sleepily look for somewhere to have breakfast.
I’ve always loved doing this. The only times I’ve missed it in thirty years was when I was sick on chemo and twice when I was out of town (and the two years it was cancelled due to Covid). Hasta la próxima… Corpus Christi Sevilla
19 Friday May 2023
Posted in culture, gastronomy, seasons, sevilla, tapas, tapas bars
We’re about mid-way through snail season. Yes, there are bars that serve them year round but those are grown in greenhouses. These are yer proper free-range wild snails! And as you can see there are two types. The tiny caracoles and the larger plumper cabrillas. They are also prepared differently. Cabrillas are cooked in a fairly standard tomato-based cuminy sauce, but with caracoles it’s all about the broth. Every bar has their own broth recipe and they really are quite distinct. Some are garlicky, others feature various herbs, some are quite peppery, and they are often served in a small glass so that once you manage to spoon and slurp out all the caracoles you can finish by drinking the broth. As you can imagine, a bit messy to eat (especially the cabrillas) because, although you are given a toothpick to dig the little buggers out of their shells, you still have to pick them up. BUT the best way to eat them, especially the smaller caracoles, is just to pick one up, and slurp it out broth and all.
28 Friday Apr 2023
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My goodness, what a joy it was to see this on my Twitter time line. And I mean really… wow. It’s an article called Alegría (Joy) by Braulio Ortiz from the Diario de Sevilla, and it just took my breath away. Braulio mentions me and “German in Spain” Christian Machowski as the ones who inspired him to write this article. It’s in Spanish and I think is behind a paywall so I have done a quick translation of the bit that mentions me and Christian. It’s basically about how oftentimes it takes an “outsider” to help us remember who we are.
We must preserve that trait of ours, our joy. It is the people who cling to life, who smile, who captivate us
Often a gaze directed outwards helps us to remember who we are; it returns to us, like a mirror that we bump into unexpectedly on a walk, a reflection in which we no longer stopped. With the excitement of a reunion, of a revelation perhaps, I am following two Twitter accounts with interest: those of Shawn Hennessey, a Canadian living in Seville who organizes amazing gastronomic tours, and Christian Machowski, a German who after residing in the United Kingdom for almost a quarter of a century settled in Malaga. One better appreciates the culinary heritage in its surroundings by observing the amazing tapas shared by the first: the quality of the raw material, and the creativity with which the chefs approach it, make up a comforting landscape. Machowski, for his part, photographs a beautiful Malaga that still preserves its essence, its original charm, despite the voracity with which tourism transforms it. In the images of both, a hospitable, friendly land appears, a place that invites you to stay, a picture almost at the antipodes of that bitter vision of dirty and noisy cities through which we in the south sometimes contemplate ourselves.
How fabulous is that? It will never be less than an overwhelming experience when I find myself being recognised by Spanish people as being one of their own, or at least accepted as someone of recognition based on my love of Spain. So I shall bask in the glow of this for a while. When I thanked Braulio on Twitter I told him that I’d much prefer to be an inspiration than an influencer, and Christian said that he agreed. Thanks again Braulio!
27 Monday Feb 2023
casa azahar 