“Seville,” wrote Byron, “is a pleasant city, famous for oranges and women.” And for its heat, he might perhaps have added, since Seville’s summers are intense and start early, in May. But the spirit, for all its nineteenth-century chauvinism, is about right. Sevilla has three important monuments and an illustrious history, but what it’s essentially famous for is its own living self - the greatest city of the Spanish south, of Carmen, Don Juan and Figaro, and the archetype of Andalucian promise. This reputation for gaiety and brilliance, for theatricality and intensity of life, does seem deserved. It’s expressed on a phenomenally grand scale at the city’s two great festivals - Semana Santa (in the week before Easter) and the Feria de Abril (which starts two weeks after Easter Sunday and lasts a week). Either is worth considerable effort to get to. Sevilla is also Spain’s second most important centre for bullfighting , after Madrid.
Despite its elegance and charm, and its wealth, based on food processing, shipbuilding, construction and a thriving tourist industry, Sevillelies at the centre of a depressed agricultural area and has an unemployment rate of nearly forty percent - one of the highest in Spain. The total refurbishment of the infrastructure boosted by the 1992 Expo - including impressive new roads, seven bridges, a high-speed rail link and a revamped airport - was intended to regenerate the city’s (and the region’s) economic fortunes but has hardly turned out to be the catalyst for growth and prosperity promised at the time. Indeed, some of the colossal debts are still unpaid a decade later.

Meantime, petty crime is a big problem, and the motive for stealing is usually cash to feed drug addiction. Bag-snatching is common (often Italian-style, from passing motos ), as is breaking into cars. There’s even a special breed called semaforazos who break the windows of cars stopped at traffic lights and grab what they can. Be careful, but don’t be put off. Despite a worrying rise in the number of muggings in recent years, when compared with cities of similar size in northern Europe, violent crime is still relatively rare.

Seville’s most famous present-day native son is the former prime minister, Felipe González , who led the Socialist administration that governed Spain for fourteen years until his defeat in 1996. Another, more bizarre Sevillano is one Gregorio XVII , who calls himself the true pope; in defiance of his excommunication by the Vatican, “Pope Greg” is leader of a large ultra-reactionary order which has made the dead Franco a saint and has built an extensive new “Vatican” in the countryside to the south of the city.

Fería de Abril
Sevilla’s week-long fiesta is Andalucía at its celebratory best, with a vast fair of flamenco dance tents, and horsemen and women dressed to kill.

La Giralda
One of the city’s principal landmarks is la Giralda - a colossal tower originally erected by the Moors as a mosque minaret and later converted into a bell tower for the world’s largest Gothic cathedral. You get an incredible view from the top.

María Luisa Park
Beat the heat of the afternoon and steel yourself for a long night on the town with a nap in Sevilla’s elegant María Luisa Park. There’s plenty of cool shade to doze in, and the dreamy tone is accentuated by the trickle of fountains.

Bar Modesto
As the city which claims to have invented tapas, Seville knocks spots off the competition. A good place to pick up the trail is Bar Modesto , in the Santa Cruz district, which offers just about every tapas imaginable.

La Carbonería
Outside Feria week, flamenco music is hard to find in Seville, with most venues offering tacky “shows” instead of the real thing. La Carbonería is an exception - a quirky bar north of Santa Cruz church which hosts sessions by local gypsy musicians most night of the week.

La marcha
Nightlife in Seville, known for good reason as la marcha (marching), usually means an interminable tapas-bar crawl around Santa Cruz, followed by a session in a nightclub and a mass get-together at dawn in the Plaza San Salvador. Not for the fainthearted.

Semana Santa may be a religious festival, but for most of the week solemnity isn’t the keynote - there’s lots of carousing and frivolity, and bars are full day and night. In essence, it involves the marching in procession of fifty-odd brotherhoods (many now including women) of the church ( cofradías ) and penitents, followed by pasos , elaborate platforms or floats on which sit seventeenth-century images of the Virgin or Christ in tableaux from the Passion. For weeks beforehand the cofradías painstakingly adorn the hundred or so pasos , spending vast amounts on costumes and precious stones. The bearers ( costaleros ) walk in time to stirring, traditional dirges and drumbeats from the bands, which are often punctuated by impromptu and moving street-corner saetas from the citizenry - short, fervent, flamenco hymns about the Passion and the Virgin’s sorrows.

The last lap of the official route for every paso goes from La Campana south along c/Sierpes, through the cathedral, and around the Giralda and the Bishop’s Palace. Throughout the week pasos leave churches all over town from early afternoon onward, snaking through the city and back to their resting place many hours later. Good Friday morning is the climax, when the pasos leave the churches at midnight and move through the town for much of the night, watched by large crowds. The highlight is the arrival at the cathedral of the paso bearing La Macarena , an image of the patroness of bullfighters, and, by extension, of Sevilla itself.

The pattern of events changes every day; banks, hotels and businesses produce free skeleton timetables , and route maps are also issued with local papers, which are essential if you want to know which events are where - the ultra-Catholic ABC paper has the best listings with piles of background and historical info on each brotherhood. On Maundy Thursday women dress in black and it’s considered respectful for tourists not to dress in shorts or T-shirts. Triana is a good location on this day, and there’s always a crush of spectators outside the cathedral and on c/Sierpes, the most awe-inspiring venue. Plaza de la Virgen de los Reyes under the Giralda is a good viewing point but even here it gets chaotic. The best way of all to see the processions is to pick them up near their starting and finishing points in their respective barrios ; here you’ll see the true teatro de la calle - theatre of the streets.

The Fería de Abril is staged a fortnight after Semana Santa ends and lasts nonstop for a week. For its duration a vast area on the far bank of the river in the barrio of Los Remedios, the Real de la Feria , is totally covered in rows of casetas , canvas pavilions or tents of varying sizes. Some of these belong to eminent sevillano families, some to groups of friends, others to clubs, trade associations or political parties. In each one - from around nine at night until perhaps six or seven the following morning - there is flamenco singing and dancing. Many of the men and virtually all the women wear traditional costume, the latter in an astonishing array of brilliantly coloured, flounced gypsy dresses.The sheer size of this spectacle is extraordinary, and the dancing, with its intense and knowing sexuality, a revelation. But most infectious of all is the universal spontaneity of enjoyment; after wandering around staring with the crowds you wind up a part of it, drinking and dancing in one of the “open” casetas which have commercial bars. Among these you’ll usually find lively casetas erected by the anarchist trade union CNT and various leftist groups.

Earlier in the day, from 1pm until 5pm, Sevillana society parades around the fairground in carriages or on horseback. An incredible extravaganza of display and voyeurism, this has subtle but distinct gradations of dress and style; catch it at least once. Each day, too, there are bullfights (at around 5.30pm; very expensive tickets in advance from the ring), generally reckoned to be the best of the season.