{"id":2243,"date":"2018-03-08T08:54:05","date_gmt":"2018-03-08T07:54:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.toursevilla.com\/?p=2243"},"modified":"2020-06-12T09:22:41","modified_gmt":"2020-06-12T07:22:41","slug":"washington-irving-the-first-tourist-in-seville","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.toursevilla.com\/en\/washington-irving-the-first-tourist-in-seville\/","title":{"rendered":"Washington Irving: The first tourist in Seville?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Maybe he was not the first but definitely one of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the spring of 1828, Washington Irving arrived at the port of Seville, this happened 190 years&nbsp;ago. He came aboard the Betis, the first steam ship in Spain that traced the Guadalquivir&nbsp;from C\u00e1diz. Irving was born in New York in 1783 and was already a well-known romantic&nbsp;writer and journalist and was also a tireless traveler and ambassador throughout Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<style type=\"text\/css\" data-created_by=\"avia_inline_auto\" id=\"style-css-av-mbswz-b96da70ae3c4fe1b64211bc23a60a592\">\n#top .hr.av-mbswz-b96da70ae3c4fe1b64211bc23a60a592{\nmargin-top:20px;\nmargin-bottom:20px;\n}\n.hr.av-mbswz-b96da70ae3c4fe1b64211bc23a60a592 .hr-inner{\nwidth:150px;\nborder-color:#4f94cd;\n}\n<\/style>\n<div  class='hr av-mbswz-b96da70ae3c4fe1b64211bc23a60a592 hr-custom  avia-builder-el-0  el_before_av_hr  avia-builder-el-first  hr-center hr-icon-no'><span class='hr-inner inner-border-av-border-fat'><span class=\"hr-inner-style\"><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n<h2>WORKS OF IRVING<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Among his most famous works known worldwide were: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, better&nbsp;known as The Legend of the Headless Horseman (adapted to film by Tim Burton in 1999) and&nbsp;Rip Van Winkle, which tells the story of someone who sleeps for dozens of years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He also wrote: The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (History of the life and trips of&nbsp;Crist\u00f3bal Columbus, 1828), Chronicles of the Conquest of Granada (1829), Voyages and&nbsp;Discoveries of the Companions of Columbus (1831). But the most celebrated book about Spain&nbsp;was Cuentos de la Alhambra (Tales of the Alhambra) (1832), where it recasts for the English&nbsp;public the best known Spanish-Arabic legends about the Red Castle. He is also owed some&nbsp;Legends of the Conquest of Spain (1835).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He was the first American to achieve celebrity as a professional writer, thanks to literature,&nbsp;and that is why numerous streets and cities in the United States are named after him.&nbsp;<strong>He influenced well-known authors such as Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe<\/strong>.&nbsp;Irving also popularized the nickname &#8220;Gotham&#8221; to refer to New York, used in Batman comics;&nbsp;He is also known as the inventor of the expression &#8220;the almighty dollar.&#8221; He died in New York&nbsp;in 1859 and is buried in the cemetery of Sleepy Hollow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<style type=\"text\/css\" data-created_by=\"avia_inline_auto\" id=\"style-css-av-etqoz-f832425435c685d560901f5ddc9b4bef\">\n#top .hr.av-etqoz-f832425435c685d560901f5ddc9b4bef{\nmargin-top:20px;\nmargin-bottom:20px;\n}\n.hr.av-etqoz-f832425435c685d560901f5ddc9b4bef .hr-inner{\nwidth:150px;\nborder-color:#4f94cd;\n}\n<\/style>\n<div  class='hr av-etqoz-f832425435c685d560901f5ddc9b4bef hr-custom  avia-builder-el-1  el_after_av_hr  el_before_av_hr  hr-center hr-icon-no'><span class='hr-inner inner-border-av-border-fat'><span class=\"hr-inner-style\"><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n<h2>WASHINGTON IRVING IN SPAIN<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.toursevilla.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/irving.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"845\" height=\"321\" src=\"https:\/\/www.toursevilla.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/irving.jpg\" alt=\"WASHINGTON IRVING: \u00bfEL PRIMER TURISTA EN SEVILLA?\" class=\"wp-image-2234\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.toursevilla.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/irving.jpg 845w, https:\/\/www.toursevilla.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/irving-300x114.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.toursevilla.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/irving-768x292.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.toursevilla.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/irving-705x268.jpg 705w, https:\/\/www.toursevilla.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/irving-450x171.jpg 450w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 845px) 100vw, 845px\" title=\"\"><\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>He came first to Madrid called by the ambassador of his country to study in El Escorial the&nbsp;documents related to the discovery of the New World (1826-1829). This assignment marked&nbsp;the beginning of his diplomatic career.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is shortly after when Washington Irving appears in Seville.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>1828 had a bright spring and Washington Irving stayed in a picturesque big house of the&nbsp;Callejon del Agua \u201calley of the Water\u201d, today house number 2, by the Alc\u00e1zar wall, in the old<br>Sevillian Jewish quarter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In Seville he spent a whole year, as a<strong> tourist and as a scholar of the History of Spain and the\u00a0city<\/strong>. He wrote a diary that has been edited by the Hispanic Society of New York: Diary of<br>Washington lrving of the Sunnyside Spain, a suggestive name that evokes the sun of Andalucia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"100%\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/QrAPpLUDCmo\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n\n\n\n<p>He spent the mornings in the study halls of the Archivo de Indias (Archive of Indies), between&nbsp;bundles and voluminous cartographic documents. Some days he visited the archives of the&nbsp;cathedral and other palaces raised with gold and silver brought from the New World.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>His meticulous work ended with the publication, some time later, of the book Vida y viajes by&nbsp;Crist\u00f3bal Col\u00f3n (Life and Journeys of Christopher Columbus). But above all he discovered&nbsp;during his stay in Seville the spirit of the Andalusian heritage, raised centuries before&nbsp;Christians came and entered through the gates of the capital. The enchanted buildings,&nbsp;wrapped in the hazy legend of lost times amazed him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As a good tourist Irving tries to see everything typical of Sevillian life: the body of San&nbsp;Femando on the day of saint&#8217;s festival and on that night the illumination of the city and the&nbsp;Giralda; the dance of the Seises the day of Corpus, the procession, the appearance of the city&nbsp;the night before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is what he writes in his diary about the Cathedral that impressed him so much:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;If you ever come to Seville, do not miss visiting its glorious cathedral &#8230; visit it at dusk, when&nbsp;the last rays of sun, rather the last shining of the day, shine through its polychrome stainedglass<br>windows. Visit it at night, when its chapels are poorly illuminated, its immense ships&nbsp;barely illuminated by the rows of silver lamps, and when the mass is prepared on the high altar, between flashes of gold and clouds of incense &#8230; I do not believe I have never felt an&nbsp;equal pleasure in any other monument of this kind &#8230; It is close to the house where I stayed&nbsp;&nbsp;in Seville and it was my daily resource. In truth, I visited it more than once in the course of&nbsp;the day. A slow wander through that cathedral, especially towards dusk, when the deepest&nbsp;shadows and the light of the polychrome stained glass more confused and vague, produced in&nbsp;me the impression of a walk through one of our great American forests &#8230; &#8221;&nbsp;But Irving needed to do one more journey, he wanted to know the last Islamic city of the&nbsp;Iberian Peninsula and his studies took him to Granada, a few days away from the capital of&nbsp;Seville. A year after his arrival, Irving undertook the trip to the city of the Alhambra.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The gardens of the Alhambra has a sculpture dedicated to him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<style type=\"text\/css\" data-created_by=\"avia_inline_auto\" id=\"style-css-av-2wgc3n-2e0838b79239a0052d448c8dc61be5b1\">\n#top .hr.av-2wgc3n-2e0838b79239a0052d448c8dc61be5b1{\nmargin-top:20px;\nmargin-bottom:20px;\n}\n.hr.av-2wgc3n-2e0838b79239a0052d448c8dc61be5b1 .hr-inner{\nwidth:150px;\nborder-color:#4f94cd;\n}\n<\/style>\n<div  class='hr av-2wgc3n-2e0838b79239a0052d448c8dc61be5b1 hr-custom  avia-builder-el-2  el_after_av_hr  avia-builder-el-last  hr-center hr-icon-no'><span class='hr-inner inner-border-av-border-fat'><span class=\"hr-inner-style\"><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n<h2>THE TRAVELERS AND ANDALUCIA<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.toursevilla.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/irving02.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"845\" height=\"321\" src=\"https:\/\/www.toursevilla.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/irving02.jpg\" alt=\"WASHINGTON IRVING: \u00bfEL PRIMER TURISTA EN SEVILLA?\" class=\"wp-image-2236\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.toursevilla.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/irving02.jpg 845w, https:\/\/www.toursevilla.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/irving02-300x114.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.toursevilla.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/irving02-768x292.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.toursevilla.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/irving02-705x268.jpg 705w, https:\/\/www.toursevilla.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/irving02-450x171.jpg 450w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 845px) 100vw, 845px\" title=\"\"><\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>The Council of Europe created years ago the Routes of the Andalusi Legacy, to promote&nbsp;tourism and make known the Andalusian land by focusing on its Arab past and the legacy of&nbsp;that time. Among these, there is a &#8220;Washington Irving route&#8221; that takes 250 km from Seville to&nbsp;Granada passing through Antequera.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This route goes through the steps followed in 1829 by the American romantic and diplomatic&nbsp;writer, fascinated by the wealth and exoticism of the Hispano-Muslim civilization. An artery&nbsp;of communications established many centuries before, which, in the late Middle Ages, served&nbsp;as a commercial route between the southern Christian peninsular and the Nasrid kingdom of&nbsp;Granada. Route that, like others, had a marked border character.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This route brings to life a second story, that of the romantic, and tourist &#8220;discovery&#8221; of&nbsp;Andalusia. In tune with the new sensitivity of romanticism, and after the staging of the&nbsp;Iberian Peninsula with the War of Independence, Spain, and Andalusia in particular, began to&nbsp;receive an increasing attention as a travel destination. The visits of Chateaubriand and Lord&nbsp;Byron, who spoke of Andalucia in their works, followed the trips and stays of Washington&nbsp;Irving himself, Richard Ford, Borrow, Delacroix, David Roberts, Gautier, Dumas and especially&nbsp;French Prosper Merim\u00e9e creator of the mythical story of Carmen, the Cigarrera.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>These travelers, French, British or American created a mysterious, romantic and folkloric&nbsp;image of Andalucia. Full of passionate characters, sometimes cruel and in love, perhaps it&nbsp;doesn\u2019t correspond to 100% with the real image, in a panorama of legends, bullfighters and&nbsp;bandits, majas and smugglers but certainly it served to raise awareness of our region outside&nbsp;our borders and to popularize its landscape, history and culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To those first &#8220;tourists&#8221; and &#8220;travelers&#8221; are dedicated this post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Maybe he was not the first but definitely one of them. In the spring of 1828, Washington Irving arrived at the port of Seville, this happened 190 years&nbsp;ago. He came aboard the Betis, the first steam ship in Spain that traced the Guadalquivir&nbsp;from C\u00e1diz. Irving was born in New York in 1783 and was already [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2235,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[56,63],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toursevilla.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2243"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toursevilla.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toursevilla.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toursevilla.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toursevilla.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2243"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.toursevilla.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2243\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4533,"href":"https:\/\/www.toursevilla.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2243\/revisions\/4533"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toursevilla.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toursevilla.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toursevilla.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toursevilla.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}