My first time at the Feria de Sevilla in 2022 was such fun that I vowed to do it again at the first opportunity. As the first big public event I’d been to since the COVID-19 lockdowns ended, it was doubly welcome. Feria had to be cancelled in 2020 and 2021, so the 2022 event was a glorious return to normality for everyone.
Feria begins two weeks after Semana Santa, or Easter Holy Week.
The fun starts at midnight on Saturday, and lasts for seven days, ending on the following Saturday. Every day begins with a parade of horse-drawn carriages and riders but these all leave the ground at 8 pm. Then the true party starts after a quick sluice down of the thoroughfare to remove all equine traces.
The fair occupies a big area on the far bank of the Guadalquivir River, which is covered in rows of casetas (temporary decorated marquees). These usually belong to prominent Sevillano families, groups of friends, clubs, trade associations and political parties. Over 1000 are private and just 16 are public.
Everyone, without exception, is dressed to the nines – usually in Flamenco finery. In 2022, I just wore a long black dress jazzed up with a shawl and some flowers. This time I wanted The Dress.
Cheryl from Cardiff was just as enthusiastic when she saw my photos from 2022 and decided to come over to Spain to join me. What’s not to like about a colorful festival of music and dancing with the chance to eat, drink and dress up in Flamenco gear?
The Outfit
Some quick research suggested that people pay around EUR 400 for a dress and browsing on Etsy supported this view. I found Spanish Facebook pages where people were selling second-hand and cheaper dresses, but didn’t really trust the sizing.
With time running out, I panic-bought a dress for over EUR 300 at a shop on Calle Sierpes in the centre of Sevilla. It was an eye-watering sum, but it definitely fitted me and I loved it.
The shop assistant inducted me into the mysteries of the hidden fastenings and laces inside the dress that hold it in place. Some have a pouch cunningly concealed in a flounce where you can fit your purse and phone, but I haven’t found one in mine – yet.
Meanwhile, as Cheryl was despairing of finding something suitable back in the UK, I hit gold at Jack’s local second-hand furniture and bric-a-brac shop: a rack of second-hand Flamenco dresses appeared as if by magic a few weeks before the start of Feria. They were priced at around EUR 25-30 and EUR 15 for skirts.
I got Cheryl’s measurements but couldn’t hang around until the shop re-opened at 5 pm (siesta time lasts for ages in Sevilla). So Jack was entrusted with the job of going back to track down one that would fit Cheryl.
While he was in the shop, a woman customer overheard him negotiating with the shopkeeper and offered to sell him her old dress for EUR 25. She was the same size as Cheryl and would throw in a shawl for another EUR 3. No time for regret about spending so much on my dress. We were in business.
All I had to do then was pick up a hair flower for Cheryl at one of the many tourist shops selling Flamenco paraphernalia and we both bought espadrilles to add the final touch.
The Big Day Arrives
Cheryl and I drove in from Portugal on the first Sunday of Feria. As we crawled through heavy traffic into the city, we passed more and more revellers flocking towards the Feria ground. Everyone was clad in colourful Flamenco gear, walking, on horseback or pulled along in beautifully restored horse-drawn carriages.
Jack greeted us a little blearily – he’d been up until 6 am celebrating the start of celebrations at midnight on Saturday.
While it was a lot of fun putting together the outfit, nothing compared to the thrill of actually dressing up and setting out.
We found that our dresses weighed a ton, the bottom frill was so tight that going to the loo was a little tricky and our espadrilles kept coming undone – but that didn’t bother us a bit.
On the first night, we got a taxi to the Feria ground and followed Jack blindly. As it was the first day, the crowds were huge. The spectacle of so many dresses – seemingly all different, prancing horses, music and dancing is quite surreal and overwhelming, in the nicest possible way.
The drink of choice is a shared pitcher of Rebujito that you drink out of shot glasses. This cocktail of Manzanilla or Fino sherry mixed with white lemonade slips down a treat and is so deceptively innocuous that it’s easy to overdo it.
As darkness fell, Cheryl and I decided we’d had enough for our first day and headed for the nearest taxi stand. With little idea of where we were, we ended up queuing unnecessarily for two hours in our uncomfortable espadrilles. It wasn’t really a great hardship as the people-watching was world-class.
We still got back in time to take Lottie for a nightcap in the Alameda and be in bed before midnight.
Day 2
We spent the morning sightseeing and found the perfect shop for Flamenco gear near Las Setas: Queens Boutique, Calle Puente y Pellón 4. Everything was a good compromise between price and quality and changing rooms were available. Dresses were about EUR 110.
We both bought a proper brooch to hold our shawls in place and Cheryl bought a blingy silver bag.
I racked my brains for the proper name for a small evening bag that dangles from the wrist and came up with “reticule”, a term used for delicate drawstring bags in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. And there is something slightly Bridgerton-like about Feria – right down to the groups of dowagers gossiping round the edges of the ball.
We found several other good Flamenco shops on the same street, but Queens Boutique was the best – an Aladin’s cave of good merchandise.
Jack surfaced in the early afternoon. He’d had another all-nighter and pleaded for a night off to recover.
After waking up with slight Flamenco fatigue, Cheryl and I were both raring to go again by evening. Without Jack to follow, we did some research and planned our outing properly this time.
(a) We ditched the espadrilles – no one could see them under our dresses anyway and our trainers were so much more comfortable
(b) We got one of the excellent Feria shuttle buses to and from the site. We paid EUR 1.40 cash each way and it took just over half an hour with no queueing. Later on, we bought a bus card topped up with cash at a tobacconists shop and our fares dropped to EUR 0.35 per trip.
(c) We downloaded a map of the site showing the 16 free casetas . The total number of casetas is over 1000 and more than a million people visit Feria each year.
(d) We used our map to orient ourselves properly and had a quiet G&T at one of the bars on the periphery before venturing through the gaudy Feria gate to join the fray.
(e) Once inside, we covered the whole area from top to bottom and side to side.
There were fewer people as it was a Monday night – although the magic was the same. The site was still thronged with the same colorful crowd.
Again we managed to get home before midnight to take Lottie for her bedtime walk.
Day 3
This was our last chance to show off our dresses and we were determined to make the most of it. We caught the bus as before and met Jack at an outside bar for a G&T before plunging into the mêlée to meet a couple of his friends.
The crowds are so big that we found the phone signal to be a bit problematic, but Jack and his friends never seem to have any trouble finding one another by WhatsApp in the maze.
Homeward bound
On the fourth day, we both set off home, already planning our return next year.
