“Latin and African nuns prevent the closure of many convents in Seville”

-How are our convents?

-Our convents are a wonderful treasure from different points of view, from a heritage point of view, from a historical point of view, from the point of view of the city’s own identity. The city of Seville would not be understood without the convents and they of course constitute an immense spiritual heritage. Apart from this, they also feed us with their Christmas treats.

-Is Seville one of the cities with the most convents in the world?

-Yeah. In 1668, when Cosimo de Medici, who later became Grand Duke of Tuscany, arrived, he already declared that Seville was a convent city. And this phrase made a fortune and remained one of the clichés of Seville. The reality is that the organization of convents had a great impact on the physical appearance of the city of Seville, both in medieval times and in the Renaissance. In the first case, they were much larger because there was much more land available. Since the Council of Trent, in the 16th century, many other convents have been founded in Seville, such as the one we are in now, the ancient convent of La Paz, and different convents have been united to form others.

–But many convents in Seville have disappeared…

-Unfortunately yes. From the 19th century, with the confiscations of Mendizábal in 1835 and the later one of Madoz, convents began to disappear, especially those for men, due to this somewhat old mentality according to which men could be more useful to society.

– ¿Was there any sort of speculation in some of these confiscations?

-The word speculation seems very harsh to me but I think it could be something of that because several convents that were around Calle Sierpes have disappeared, which in the 19th century was the Golden Street of Seville. There were the most important cafes and shops. Obviously, these lands were a treat for people who had enough money to acquire these properties transformed into cafes, meeting halls and even theaters.

-Are there any convents in Seville that are at risk of closing at the moment?

-When a convent remains with a minimum number of nuns, it is declared extinct and those who remain must join another. Convents which at the time were open to vocations from outside women did not run this risk. Sister Cristina de Arteaga, of the Hieronymites, was widely criticized in the 1970s and 1980s for welcoming girls from India. At the time, there was not as much shortage of vocations as there is today. San Leandro currently has 19 nuns and almost all of them are of African origin. And absolutely nothing happens because they are also perfectly integrated and beautiful and living their lives and their spirituality perfectly.

-Are there more African nuns than Spanish or European nuns in the convents of Seville?

-I don’t have the data but I think so. We can say that there are many more vocations of foreign origin than of national origin. I emphasize the original word, because for me the African nuns of San Leandro are more Sevillian than me.

-Can we say that immigration maintains the convents of Seville?

-Immigration maintains so many things. They come to do a lot of work in Spain.

-They take care of our elders and maintain the life of the convents…

-Yes, these seem to me to be two fundamental things and they prevent the closure of many convents, but they do many more things.

-We Sevillians know little about the history of Seville, despite how much we love and admire our city?

-I would say yes, we favor clichés and legends a lot, but that often hides the story. Sometimes it is a thread which, knowing it well, can be pulled, even to extract a concrete, truly historical fact. But we know it better because it’s a lot more fun, a lot more engaging. The secret, the esoteric.

-Legends of spirits and apparitions continue to be told about old convents…

-These beliefs have always existed but for me they are absurd. It is much more important and much more interesting to know what life is really like in the current convent.

-Which historical character from Seville fascinated you the most?

-I am fascinated by the unknown, what people don’t normally experience. And yet, it is important. And as someone born in Seville in 1617, I am fascinated by the figure of Nicolas Antonio. This man was an ecclesiastic and a diplomat. He was in Rome and did something fundamental to the history of culture, like collecting all the bibliographic citations of everything that had been published from the ancient times of Rome until the mid-17th century. Everything, absolutely everything. He wrote that in several volumes, scholars worked hard and very few people cited him. If this man, instead of being born in Seville and devoting himself to books, had been born in Germany, he would be very well known and have awards and even a university in his name. We celebrated his fourth centenary in 2017 at the Ministry of Culture but the man had the misfortune of being born the same year as Murillo, which caused him to be eclipsed by the painter. Another one who did a lot for Sevilla was Pablo Olavide, who more people know, but on the basis of the cliché. He was not at all a disbeliever, as none of the enlightened ones were, but he did not believe much in relics. And he modified and modernized Seville. And he produced the first modern plan of the city of Seville, more topographical than anything that had been done before. And he established the nomenclature of the street plan. And he divided the city rationally.

-Another illustrious immigrant…

-Well, Spain never had colonies. He was born in Lima and came from the Viceroyalty of Peru, but it was part of Spain like any peninsular territory.

–He talked about this first shot of the streets of Seville. Is the current street plan balanced? Aren’t you missing any names?

– It’s not me who will judge him. But what I can say is that the custom of dedicating the name of a street to someone as a tribute dates back to the 19th century until today. This had not been done before. Sometimes the street was named after a person, for example Zamudio Street, which is next to San Leandro. Zamudio was the last name of one of Philip II’s doctors and he was named after this street because he lived there. To change the name of the streets, you would have to see it. They dedicated a street to my paternal grandfather in Zafra and when they asked the family what name they should give it, we replied that they should not remove the name from any street and that they should put it in a newly created area.

-What do you think about changes in street names due to the law of historical memory?

-Historical memory should be truly historical, that is to say going back to the origin of this name and seeing what this street was called in the 17th century. And one more important thing, we’re going to see what the people call it, what the city calls it and what the citizens call it. Not to do so would, in my opinion, be a failure of historical memory. And I find it very positive to put tiles with the name “old street of…”. One of them was already installed on Sagasta Street in the 1980s along with the old Gallego Street.

-What do you think about the fact that Felipe González does not have a street in Seville?

-The current denominations do not interest me. I would prefer that the street be called what it has always been called, what citizens call it, as we have done since the Middle Ages. Rue Franco has been called that since the 13th century, and not by the French or by Francisco Franco, as famous illiterates believe today. This was thanks to the people who practiced free trade from certain royal taxes and who were exempt from these taxes.

-In Madrid, General Weyler, hero of the Philippine War, was taken away from the street, thinking that he was a Francoist general…

-There is a lot of ignorance here and a huge mistake can be made. And this ignorance is found at all levels.