Tram to the Mediterranean

[excerpt from "Under Andalusian Skies," New York Times, March 30th]

When I lived in Seville three years ago,

I walked everywhere – to school, to the train station, to the Guadalquivir river when I needed a breeze. Now there’s a tram through the city; it cuts through its cobbled streets -
a modern, white snake – all the way to the Mediterranean beach…
MGW

“Last fall just days after the inauguration of the tram system in Seville, Spain, one of the cars derailed on Avenida de la Constitución, the city’s busiest street. No one was injured — the local horse-drawn carriages seem to move at a faster clip — and the mayor rode it the next day to reassure his citizens that the tram was safe.

Still, not too many people were riding it recently.

Sevillanos seem to raise a suspicious brow at “progress,” as this is a city that has always been tethered to its colorful and religious past: bullfighting, flamenco and Semana Santa, the holy week between Palm Sunday and Easter, when the streets are crowded with velvet-draped processions….

If you look up beyond the Gothic church spires, however, you can’t help but notice the canopy of cranes above. Seville is in the midst of a building boom:
a new high-speed rail line to the Mediterranean.

During the digging, the crews found Roman ruins, so archaeologists were brought in to excavate, which led to construction delays.

“What takes a year somewhere else, takes three years in Spain,”

says Claudius Gehr, a German documentary filmmaker who has split his time between Germany and Seville for the past seven years.

Nonetheless, Mayer is impressed with the government’s willingness to rethink the idea of its city. “They needed an icon to compete with other cities,” he says.
‘This place, this port, has always been a gateway for ideas and invention.’ ”

~ by meagangwhite on March 31, 2008.