Things I Remember: Seville (Sevilla), Spain 1988

My Apartment in Sevilla

It wasn't exactly my apartment per se because I had to share Apartamento 2E at No. 1 Virgen de Robledo with two Spanish roommates.  When I arrived in Spain on September 21, 1988 I had it all to myself for about a week and a half; Juan Carlos, who was 18 and hailed from Jerez de los Caballeros in Extremadura, was the first to arrive; Demetrio, 31, was from  Madrid and he rented a room in that apartment every fall.

Apartamento 2E was owned by a middle-aged couple and was one of the many such lodgings used by the College Consortium for International Studies  to house American participants in its Semester in Spain program.  In my group, most of us lived in these residencias or in private homes with host families.  If memory serves, a few students opted to rent their own places without having to deal with Spanish roommates or host families; these, however, were a tiny subgroup in our 42-member CCIS Fall Term class.

Even though you might think that Apartamento 2E was located in the floor above the building entrance, it was actually in what we in the U.S. call the third floor.  I am not sure why, but in Spain the first story of an apartment building is called the "piso de abajo" and what we would consider the second floor is called "el primer piso."  I discovered this upon my arrival; Manuel, my landlady's husband told me that the elevator was temporarily out of order, so we had to lug my baggage up a very steep flight of stairs.  (This was not easy; I had two suitcases full of clothes, grooming materials and other essential items, and a carry-on bag for my Brother electric typerwriter and a Sure Shot camera I'd borrowed from my campus student paper.)

The apartment was located at the far end of a dimly-lit corridor, next to Apartamento 2D, which is where Josefa - the landlady - and Manuel lived. The door was made of heavy wood and was painted dark brown, with only the brass doorknob and the apartment number (also in brass) to break up the darkness.  The door wasn't exactly easy to open; Manuel had a bit of trouble unlocking it to let me in, but at least he could do it because he had years of practice. I didn't think much of this at first, but that lock would give me fits the next day.

The layout was pretty standard for an apartment of that size.  It had a large common room which served as living room, dining room, and refrigerator area.  A short hall to the left led to what had once been the kitchen; Josefa had the stove and oven removed six months before my arrival after a CCIS student nearly burned down the place while attempting to cook dinner. The former kitchen had been converted into an extra bedroom, albeit a small and uncomfortable one.

Before you entered that room, you would pass by the apartment's only bathroom.  It had the usual bathroom fittings you'd expect to find in Europe: a sink with a medicine cabinet/mirror, a shower (with the water heater inside), a toilet and a bidet.  It was all in white tile and impeccably clean, but the shower was somewhat cramped because the heater was placed on the "far" end from the shower head.

The worst thing about the water heater being in the shower wasn't so much that you had to avoid running into it when you entered or exited. No, you had to make sure that you plugged in the heater to the power socket in the common room (it shared the same outlet as the fridge) so you could have hot water, then unplug it immediately before you took your shower!

Back in the common room we had a long wooden table with four matching chairs; this was our dining area.  To the right of the dining area, Josefa and Manuel had set up a sofa and a small entertainment area with a shelf for a small black-and-white TV set.  A westward facing window with a view of the rest of the apartment building dominated the wall behind the couch.  The two bedrooms lay beyond the common room; the main bedroom had two beds, a dresser, a night table and a small work desk for us to do our classwork on.  It also had a huge window that faced the "core" of the building and let in sunlight during the afternoon hours.  The other bedroom was tucked inside the other corner of the common area and was Demetrio's exclusive domain.  (All the furniture, books and decor were his,)

The entire apartment had tile on the floor; with the exception of the bathroom and the former kitchen, the tile was gray-green.  The bathroom tile was white and the extra bedroom (which still bore the scars of the removal of the sink, stove and other fittings) had a lemon-yellow floor.   There were a few red throw rugs to break up the monotony, but not much else.  I don't remember if we had any photos or paintings framed on the walls, but I do recall that there was a map of the USA with the Lee jeans logo on one corner.

For the equivalent of $300 a month (in 1988 dollars), we were entitled to stay as long as we paid rent and one home cooked meal a day.  We had no washing machine or dryer, so we had to pay Josefa for laundry services (which cost an extra $40 a month, depending on how big our laundry loads were.).  For most of our other meals (Josefa provided el almuerzo or la cena as part of the deal, depending on our requests, we bought our own groceries and stored perishables in our fridge.  We had to let Josefa cook all the meals because she didn't trust us in her remaining kitchen; because her cooking skills left something to be desired, Demetrio, who was older and had a steady job in Madrid, often dined in restaurants.   Juan Carlos and I, who were on fixed budgets, often asked Josefa to prepare simple meals, which often were nothing more than ham sandwiches and tea.  I survived my three-month stay by eating calamares fritos  and drinking a bottle of Coke at a sidewalk cafe off the Paseo de las Delicias at least three times a week. And I ate lots of ham sandwiches!

Like in most European apartment buildings of the time, our residencia had no central air conditioning or heating.  I arrived at the beginning of autumn so the weather was generally mild and there was no need for Miami-style A/C.  We kept the windows open during the day and the temperatures were fairly comfortable till the middle of October.  After that, however, the temperatures dropped and we'd only open the windows for a few hours from late morning to early afternoon.

From October till mid-December of 1988, Apartamento 2E was virtually a refrigerator, especially at night.  During one particularly strong cold snap, Josefa loaned us two space heaters.  We used them to warm up the "common area" so we could at least eat or watch TV without having to bundle up under layers of clothes.  Even so, our apartment was uncomfortably cold most of the time.