After the artistic and spiritual Holy Week, our springtime still deserves us one of the most significant moments in the Sevillan calendar. This week we celebrate our Feria de Abril, the celebration of the end of the winter and the beginning of the good weather. It’s also the perfect time to meet friends and family we don’t see so often.
These short films are part of the advertising campaign that our local, public broadcaster Giralda TV and the Seville Tourist Office have prepared to take the flavours of the Fair everywhere in the world. You can see more at their Youtube channel.
And, of course, if you want to know more about the Feria, it’s a great time to go back to our last year’s articles about the ‘Keywords to the Feria’: the first one is here and the second one is here.
Our coverage of the Holy Week 2009 was a huge success. In collaboration with Giralda Television, the city’s public TV channel, we streamed their live broadcasting through the Internet and reached 360.000 viewers during the all-week-long celebrations. For this reason we wanted to go a step (or two) further and make you feel like being in the very centre of the processions… even if you read us from the other side of the world.
Working side by side with our colleagues from Giralda TV, we will provide a truly 2.0 coverage on one of the most representative events of our city. How? By complementing the great broadcasting with some of the most frequently used web 2.0 tools that you, and us, us everyday.
By visiting www.elprograma.tv (starting on Sunday morning, one week before Palm Sunday when the first procession takes place) you can participate in an unprecedented project. All in the same website, you’ll be able to watch the live streaming video of Giralda TV, receive practical alerts about traffic and public transport, and a map with live information with the exact geo-localised position of each brotherhood.
We have yet one more thing to tell you: we’ll be using the Youtube Direct technology for the first time in Spain so you can even send us your own videos, which will be broadcasted both at  www.elprograma.tv and our open, free DVB programmes. We’ll tell you how in our next post.
Arriving in Seville using the A4 highway reserves an unexpected surprise for the traveller: it ends in the Avenida de Kansas City. There’s even a funnier surprise a little further: a statue of a Native American riding a horse (and, by the way, watching at the old Cruzcampo factory, which is only a few blocks away).
Our Midwestern American visitors must have also noticed that our Giralda looks quite similar to the tower of the Country Club Plaza in Kansas City, Missouri.
There has been a history of relations between the largest city of Missouri and the capital of Andalusia. It all began with the visit of JC Nichols, a real estate developer who fell in love with the architecture of our city and decided to pay his own homage in his city, building the first suburban shopping centre in the United States, known as the Country Club Plaza, as early as in 1923.
The Giralda at the Country Club Plaza, by Andrew Buckingham / flickr
These links were formally established in a twinning agreement in 1967, making Kansas City and Seville sister cities. A monument to commemorate the union was established in the main entrance of the city from the north, which was named Avenida de Kansas City. In 1992, after the Expo’92 ended, the statue of a Native American explorer that the US Pavilion displayed was placed in the monument (as you can see in the picture by LaSombraDelViento above). Nowadays, collaboration has also been extended to the two cities’ universities.
Google Earth offers an easy, free way to visit the whole world without leaving your desk. It is, in fact, a great complement to the real visits, rather than a substitute. With this free app (that you can download from Google), we can get some points of view that would only be accesible by plane or helicopter. The most amazing feature is the 3D models that let us discover the city’s most important monuments in a complete new way.
Here is, for example, a great view of the Cathedral and Giralda model:
Cathedral and Giralda / Google Earth
You can also fly over the Quinto Centenario Bridge, the one that is still named ‘El Paquito’ on Google Maps for its similarities to San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge in a reduce scale ;):
The Quinto Centenario Bridge ("el Paquito") / Google Earth
Or take a look at the Isla de la Cartuja Technology Park, which lies where the 1992 World Expo was held and has reused many of its pavilions:
This is the first post dedicated to the countless monuments of our city. One of the most famous is the bell tower of St Mary’s cathedral, commonly known as the Giralda, that you can see in the picture above by Greg Emel. We will start today by speaking about its history, although we promise to periodically bring you some of the stories and legends that have been told and written about it.Â
Designed by Ahmad ibn Baso in 1184 as the minaret of the Almohad mosque, the Giralda singularly combines both muslim and catholic styles to form one of the most world famous Seville’s icons. Although Roman ashlars were used for its foundations, it is almost entirely built with ceramic bricks. Its original aspect must have been very similar to the minaret of Marrakesh’s Koutoubia Mosque, which was in fact used as a model for the Giralda.Â
Tourists at the Giralda
However, the distinctive bell tower was added in the 16th century to complete its unique combination of muslim and christian architecture. Its redesigned was completed in 1568 by adding its characteristic 4-metre weather vane that still today indicates the direction of the wind by rotating at a height of 97.5 m. The weather vane’s name, Giraldillo (from the verb ‘girar’, to rotate) is the origin of the Giralda’s name.Â
As a curiosity, let us finish by saying that some other ‘Giraldas’ have been built around the world as an homage to our very own symbol. You can read more about them at the Wikipedia.
