Culture

Festivals
Semana Santa and the Seville Fair, La Feria de Sevilla (also Feria de Abril, "April Fair") are the two most well-known of Seville's festivals. Seville is internationally renowned for the solemn but beautiful processions during Holy Week and the colourful and lively fair held two weeks after. During Feria, families, businesses and organizations set up casetas, marquees, in which they spend the week dancing, drinking, and socializing. Traditionally, women wear elaborate flamenco dresses and men dress in their best suits. The marquees are set up on a permanent fairground in which each street is named after a famous bullfighter.

Gastronomy
Seville is a gastronomic centre, with a cuisine based on the products of the surrounding provinces, including seafood from Cádiz, olive oil from Jaén, and sherry from Jerez de la Frontera.

The tapas scene is one of the main cultural attractions of the city: people go from one bar to another, enjoying small dishes called tapas (literally "lids" or "covers" in Spanish, referring to their probable origin as snacks served in small plates used to cover drinks.)

Local specialities include fried and grilled seafood (including squid, cuttlefish, swordfish and dogfish), grilled meats in sauces, spinach and chickpeas, Andalusian ham (Jamón ibérico), lamb's kidneys in a sherry sauce, snails, and gazpacho.

Typical sweet cakes of this province are polvorones and mantecados from the town of Estepa, a kind of shortcake made with almonds, sugar and lard; Pestiños, a honey-coated sweet fritter; Torrijas, fried slices of bread with honey; Roscos fritos, deep-fried sugar-coated ring doughnuts; magdalenas or fairy cakes; yemas de San Leandro, which provide the city's convents with a source of revenue, and Tortas de aceite, a thin sugar-coated cake made with olive oil.

Except for polvorones and mantecados, which are traditional Christmas products, all of these are consumed throughout the year.

The Seville oranges that dot the city landscape, too bitter for modern tastes, are commonly used to make marmalade and lotions; according to legend, the trees were imported when the mosque was constructed in order to provide shade and mask the scent of the medieval city. However, many tourists insist on trying the oranges which taste like sour lemons.

Flamenco and Sevillanas
 
Flamenco dancers in SevilleThe Sevillanas dance, commonly presented as flamenco, is not thought to be of Sevillan origin. But the folksongs called Sevillanas are authentically Sevillan, as is the four-part dance that goes with them.

Seville, and most significantly the traditionally gypsy barrio, Triana, was a major centre in the development of flamenco.