Traversing seville

Food and flamboyance in the Andalusian capital. Charly Wilder reports.

You don't have to spend long in Seville to see why so many operas have been set there. A sense of drama pervades the Andalusian capital, from its Moorish royal palaces and extravagant Catholic festivals to the way the strum of a guitar tends to send a whole room into syncopated clapping.

Maybe it's this penchant for pomp that keeps the city dynamic in lean times. At contemporary shops, restaurants and arts spaces that continue to open among Seville's tangle of narrow stone alleyways, a friendly localism seems to rule the day.