Expo of 92: Seville’s Ticket into the 21st Century
It is December in Triana, Seville, and I am having my hair cut at Edu’s barbershop. Edu speaks not more than a handful of words in English. Still, he plays American rock on the radio and sings along undeterred. It is hard to explain how we have become friends over the three months since I arrived in the city; he is more than 20 years my senior and my own grasp of Spanish is some distance from fluent. But we drink together, and I know his family, and this is the only place I would ever come to get my hair cut. So, I would say that we are friends.
As he snips away and curses the rapidly cooling temperatures outside, I ask about the strange buildings that I’ve seen to the north of Triana, in hedged in on the wrong side of the river to the northwest of the city. The question dampens his mood for a moment. ‘A shame,’ he says. Then something like nostalgia takes him and he begins to tell stories of glamour and excitement that I’m unable to understand in their entirety. One phras, however, is repeated several times: the Expo of 92.
This all seems important. Edu assures me that it was. So, once the haircut’s done and paid for, I set about doing my own research.
The Expo of 92 was a culmination of antique and recent historical significance. A year after Franco’s rule over Spain ended in 1975, the new King Juan Carlos I announced his intention to stage the ‘Third International Ibo-American Exposition’, a celebration of Spain’s deliverance of ‘Western culture to America’ and a demonstration of democratic Spain’s new place in the world following near economic collapse. The Expo was to take place in Seville in 1992, five hundred years after Christopher Columbus set sail along the Guadalquivir before chancing upon the Americas. The scale of design for the event would be nothing short of continental.
Those strange buildings I had asked Edu about were and continue to be the fruits of said exposition – and strange they are indeed. Over a hundred countries took part and built pavilions designed to showcase their own unique cultures in the most awe-inspiring manners possible. A previously barren patch of land to the west of the river measuring 531 hectares was squared off and transformed into a new, futuristic landscape. The Junta de Andalucía invested €4 billion in preparation. Seville prepared itself for a very sudden leap into the twenty first century.
The resulting site exhibited the work of the world’s finest contemporary architects and was some venture to behold; a newly-democratised Chile transported an iceberg from their southern oceans to be cooled and exhibited at the event. Kuwait fashioned their pavilion into a giant wooden structure with a cantilevered roof that would unfurl like the interlaced fingers of a clasped hand. The ‘Pavilion of the Future’ had a life-size replica of the European Space Agency’s Ariana 4 erected outside. All participants leaned into the unabashed decadence of the event. By all accounts – not least Edu’s – the modernity of it all rocked old Seville, famed for and accustomed to its old Moorish architecture and orange groves.
At the end of rainy January, I return to the barbershop for another haircut. Equipped now with context, I enjoy Edu’s stories of how he worked at the Expo as a young man. Tales of the riverside parties that boomed late into the following morning. Of how in one single day he trimmed the hair of both King Juan Carlos I and Naomi Campbell. This had been a vibrant moment in Seville’s history which started on 20th April and ran until 12th October, bringing 40 million visitors to a city with a current population of just 700,000. The action of the event was an unqualified success and lives fondly in the memories of those around to have witnessed it.
These days, though, the remaining pavilions stand like an Ozymandias to that success. Most of the pavilions have been torn down and others left to the elements to be reclaimed by nature; the Pavilion of the Future is set behind a trench of weeds that grow some six metres into the air. It is reminiscent of those strange ghost towns that sprang up around China in the 2000s; a replica Eiffel Tower like that of Tianducheng would not look out of place. It is for this reason that Edu proclaims it ‘a shame’.
Though some buildings have found occupants by way of businesses or research centres, the area itself is void of regular footfall. The most popular public attraction is now the Isla de Mágica theme park. Isla de Mágica has upcycled a number of the Expo’s old pavilions to save them from demolition. Organisations like the Asociacion Legado Expo Sevilla continue to preserve and repurpose whatever else remains as well. Still, one cannot help but feel that an opportunity has been wasted.
However, it would be wrong to say that the Expo functions only as a memory. Its epicentre may make for a post-apocalyptic vista now, but the associated investment in infrastructure has been lasting. In preparation for the event there were several improvements to the city’s accessibility. The specially-built Santa Justa is still a major train station in the south of Spain. The direct line between Seville and Madrid lives on too. The expansion of Seville’s airport has made it one of the most accessible spots in Spain – it’s the place I flew to directly from Manchester. Tourism is by far the biggest source of money in this old town and the locals are grateful as such. While the Expo might have seemed like rather a lot of hot air at the time, it is no doubt the reason why Seville’s world has expanded to such an extent.
President of the Asociacon Legado Expo Sevilla, Angel Aramburu, sums up the change quite poignantly:
‘I lived close to the Expo when I was a child, so when it opened I was seeing many things for the first time. Can you imagine what it was like? Before then I’d never seen anyone from China, Japan or any African country.’
This is not an exaggeration. Any local will tell you how quickly things have changed even in the last ten years. Local laws have been introduced to quell the inflation of house prices caused by the rapid spread of Air BnB apartments. Seville is now a lively hub of international, cultural exchange, not least through its extremely popular Erasmus program. While the physical remnants of the Expo of 92 may make it seem a thing of the past, its cultural impact reverberates even to this day.
*
On my most recent trip to the barbers I ask how much Edu remembers of Seville before the Expo.
‘There used to be just one road out of Sevilla.’ He tells me happily as he clippers my neck hair. ‘A road covered in dust and horse shit.’
‘Do you miss that?’ I ask. He frowns.
‘Why would I miss that?’