Seville

New York—the neighborhood I call home, and one of the pandemic’s first epicenters—our early spring days were dark with trauma. Ambulances wailed outside my windows, the news was awash with scenes from overwhelmed Elmhurst Hospital a few blocks (tapas calls): oxtail stew, lacy fried fish, dusky curls of Ibérico ham. But the eats——weren’t the only reason I longed for Andalusia’s capital. Seville is Spain’s most sociable city, with its fiestas and religious processions and its ritual of the , the bar crawl that refuels the city’s community spirit.